The Ghosts in the Machine
by A. Farnese
Summary: London, 2075: Aiding a group of cybercriminals was not part of Arthur's life plan, but the evidence of corruption in his family's company was too terrible to ignore, forcing him to throw in his lot with criminals and leading him to a world below London he never imagined. Cyberpunk AU T-Plus for language, mentions of drug use. Freylin
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: This story was originally posted to AO3 last year, but I wasn't happy with the finished product, so I took it down and set about re-working the story. A lot of it has stayed the same, but there will be several changes and a lot of additions._

 _Disclaimer: Merlin and its characters are not mine. No money is being made from this._

* * *

There was a time when Arthur had thought he'd known what exhaustion was. He'd been to University, after all, spent dozens and dozens of sleepless nights either studying in the library or in his flat with any number of pliant female classmates (and if he were being honest, some male ones, too) he'd brought home after this party or that, everyone freshly dosed with alcohol or the latest designer drug the boffins in the chem labs had cooked up. He remembered enough of the good times to selectively forget how awful it was coming down from it all the next day.

Then there was that military stint in Wherever-it-was-istan, chasing down rebels and radicals for the requisite two years to find out what it was like to be a soldier so he could discuss such matters with generals and nominal leaders of the world's nations. His father had always said it was useless to talk the talk if he couldn't walk the walk. Or some paraphrasing of it. Uther Pendragon would never talk like that, but it boiled down to the same thing.

And always work. Endless work, and it never felt like he did enough to please his father, no matter how much success he achieved, how much sleep he sacrificed, or whatever else he gave up for the family business as he raced his half-sister Morgana up the corporate ladder, making it all the way up to Vice-President at the ridiculously early age of thirty. Some claimed it was nepotism. But the day after he'd been named to the position and finally had the chance to sleep in to the late hour of seven a.m. and take his first real day off in five years, he knew he had earned that position. And the time off. All twenty-two hours of it before the rat race began again.

After all that, Arthur thought he'd known what exhaustion was.

He didn't have a fucking clue.

Of course, he'd never attempted any of that while bleeding to death.

Walking was a complicated proposition when far too much of his blood was soaking into his clothes, turning his coat and his jeans- real wool, real cotton, and godawfully expensive- into a sticky mess that clung to his weary body like the chemical laden fog that hung over old London like a fever dream.

He hadn't indulged in any drugs since his University days. He'd decided they were too nasty a habit to keep up with after a particular holiday bender that had landed him in Berlin with no recollection of how he'd ended up there. But right now he wouldn't mind taking a few of them. Especially the uppers that might keep him on his feet long enough to make it… somewhere. Ephemera, Velocity, or whatever else was available.

Or, he decided as he stumbled over something slippery and rancid, staggered into a wall, and ignited a fire in his wounded shoulder, maybe he'd like a dose of Red Dragon to send him off into a dreamy haze and keep the pain at bay until he finally ran out of blood. Because in the hours after he'd sent that report off across the matrix and fled the Pendragon Arcology, been shot by his father's hired assassins, and somehow escaped to the bottom of the skyscraper-walled canyons of lower London, he hadn't heard a word from the woman who had gotten him into this mess to begin with.

Not that he could blame her. He'd dumped his glasses moments after making it out of the the arcology, disabled the locator chip in his arm, and tossed his mobile into the Thames the first chance he found. Maybe she could remotely enable the locator chip and find him, but he had to admit that he _had_ disposed of any ability he'd had to communicate with her- Bastet- and whoever it was she'd sent to pick him up. And his unscheduled run-in with the assassins had made him miss his appointed meeting and sent him fleeing to God only knew where. Bastet might have a deft hand with anything digital, but she wasn't all-knowing.

Arthur stumbled forward a few more dizzied steps until he ran face first into something cold and hard. A wall. He reached out to steady himself and squinted up against the mist. There was a sign overhead. An all too telling one, since it read "Dead End". He giggled, edging toward an uncontrollable hysteria as he slid down to the glistening pavement and closed his eyes. _'You're all too right, sign'._

Things had stopped spinning when he opened his eyes again. The distant, garishly colored lights had faded toward gray. He shivered in spite of his bulky coat.

' _Never thought I'd die in the gutter…'_

Hands locked onto his shoulder and pushed him against the wall. Fingers under his chin tilted his head up. He blinked, trying to focus on the face under the hood, but a battered respirator covered half the shadowed face, and there was only a faint reflection off the smoky enhanced reality glasses.

"Shit, Pendragon. You just had to go and make things hard on yourself, didn't you?" A muffled male voice said.

Arthur blinked, watching with fascination as a gray tunnel closed around his vision. Twin flashes of gold were the last things he saw before the darkness became complete.

* * *

 _There was no water where she was, but she floated all the same, drifting along a tide of data, breathing in ones and zeroes like she would breathe air in the real world. Any other mind would be reeling from the ocean of information, sent spinning by the currents of world news and a thousand holovid channels broadcasting noise to minds that neither noticed nor cared that the hours of their lives were ticking away in a steady progression. Meanwhile, a few billion voices chattered away in conversations ranging from ridiculous to profound. She treated them like birdsong. Idle, decorative noise that meant nothing unless one could decipher the codes of sparrows' tongues._

 _She liked it there in the matrix. It was quiet in its way. There was no pain. She could wander where she willed, listen, watch, experience whatever she wanted._

 _Tonight though, in the midst of her digital dreams, there were only three voices of consequence. She swam in the binary space around them, taking in the view from optical implants, listening in on them via wristbound flex-mobiles, watching one of them watch the others through enhanced reality glasses. She led them, too, through the maze of streets and bridges and footpaths spiralling through old London like a thousand spiderwebs, directing them straight as possible to their lost and found again quarry._

 _"You have him," she said. It was a statement, not a question, spoken over commlinks and voiced aloud, for the watcher beside her and the seekers in the streets._

" _Found, yeah. Wounded, though. He's unconscious. We're all okay otherwise." Through the glasses, Pendragon looked worse than bad. It looked like he was dying. She turned his locator chip back on just long enough to watch his vitals, take note of the beating of his heart, the rhythm of his lungs, watch the electric pulse of his brain spike and settle into dream state._

 _Not dying, then. He'd been healed enough to get him to safety._

 _"Bring him back. We'll be waiting," she told them._

" _Have you cleared a way for us?"_

 _Her voice was a warm purr across the digital space. "Of course I have. Be safe. I'll see you soon."_

" _Sooner than that." She heard the smile in his voice as he broke the link._

Freya swam up and out of the matrix, trading a pain-free unreality for the weariness of the real world, opened real eyes and saw real light. She sighed and relaxed against the cushions. A warm, dry hand pressed against her forehead. "Gaius?" she blinked up at him.

"I know. You found him." The old man smiled at her and tugged the blanket back over her shoulders. "Rest now. You've had a long day. They'll be home soon."

* * *

"Are you alright?"

It wasn't the question that brought Merlin fully back to his senses so much as the hands that hoisted him up off his knees and leaned him against the wall, and the fingers checking the pulse in his wrist, sending a blush of warmth to help fight off the feeling that an acid bath had washed through under his skin. "Yeah." He didn't nod. He was a bit too dizzy for that and didn't want to risk vomiting on Will's shoes. "Just give me a minute."

Will glanced over his shoulder, head cocked like he was listening to something Merlin couldn't hear. "Don't have too many of those to spare. How does two sound?"

"Fantastic," Merlin whispered. He'd only asked for one. He drew in a long breath and pushed his hood back, wishing he could pull the respirator off his face and toss it in the gutter along with the glasses that helped him navigate the dark streets. They were useful and stylish and he hated them. It would be better if he could use his own eyes, his own _abilities,_ but even in this day and age you got the wrong kind of attention if your eyes suddenly started glowing gold without the benefit of bioware. "How is he?"

"Still alive, thanks to you," Will said. "Gwaine says the bleeding's slowed, maybe stopped. He's breathing alright, so he'll probably make it home. You didn't almost kill yourself for a dead man, so that's a positive."

"Yeah." Merlin rubbed the back of his neck and shivered.

"You okay?" Gwaine's voice crackled in his earbud.

"Everyone asks that," Merlin muttered. He passed a hand over his eyes and shook his head, noticing that he could actually shake his head without feeling like he was going to pass out or throw up. "Yes, I'm going to make it," he said more loudly, not bothering to mask the irritation in his voice.

"Great!" Gwaine chirped. "Now give me a hand with Pendragon. I don't fancy hauling his deadweight across London all by my lonesome."

"You're a real Samaritan, Gwaine. The best that ever was." Will shook his head, vaguely disgusted, and turned back to tug Merlin's hood back into place. "You did good tonight. Now let's go home."

* * *

"Is he going to make it?"

There was a harum scarum seeming fuss going on in the little bedroom-turned-infirmary. Too many bodies on hand in the too small space, all wanting to see the goings on and make sure the night's efforts hadn't been wasted on a corpse-to-be that they could have left lying in the dead end alley. Gaius might have shooed them out with a few harsh words, but his thoughts were on the body in front of him. He didn't like losing a patient. Especially not one so young to something like a bullet. It was, Merlin knew, an archaic sort of death. One that should have gone the way of petrol and real coffee.

"Gaius?"

"I'm working, Merlin." Gaius didn't quite snap at him, he never actually snapped at Merlin. But he was close to it right now. "Hand me that IV line."

Merlin took that as a good sign. Gaius wouldn't be worried about keeping Pendragon pumped full of fluids and painkillers if he were about to die.

"This wouldn't have happened if he'd just done as he was told," Will grumped from near the door. He'd been the one carrying most of Pendragon's weight on the way back.

If the meeting had gone as planned, they would have all walked home. But something had spooked Pendragon in the first minutes of his escape. If it hadn't been for Freya's skills with all things digital, they never would have found him. He would have bled out in a decrepit alleyway behind Mr. Hsu's restaurant, a place Merlin would have told Pendragon to avoid at all costs. You never knew what went into the food there, and it seemed like the resident rats were thinner on the ground thereabouts than they were anywhere else.

He started humming. A twentieth century showtune he and Freya used to waltz along to, dancing around Gaius's lab to annoy the old scientist during their aggravating teenage years. He could never decide if the two of them loved the song because of the catchy lyrics, or if it was because the macabre subject was as dark and as twisted as their own lives had been.

" _And we have some shepherd's pie peppered  
_ _With actual shepherd on top!  
_ _And I've just begun -  
_ _Here's the politician, so oily  
_ _It's served with a doily,  
_ _Have one!"_

They'd waltz in careful circles until Gaius finally had enough and yelled at them to stop, and so they would, halting their steps and laughing their troubles away before searching for some other distraction to keep their minds off reality.

They never should have stopped dancing.

Merlin silenced his humming and licked his lips. The dizziness and most of the pain had worn off by now. He may as well make himself useful. "You want me around for anything, then?"

He knew the answer before Gaius drew breath to say it. "No, Merlin, I have this in hand. Go and see to Freya, will you? Make sure she's still asleep. Today was hard on her. And make sure you get some rest yourself." Gaius waved a thin hand toward the door without looking back at him. Will gave Merlin a sympathetic look and shrugged as if to say, _'Sorry, mate'._

Merlin gave him a crooked smile and folded his arms across his chest, the fingers of one hand crawling up to his shoulder to massage the tense muscles and chase away the burning sensation under his skin. The seam of his shirt was starting to come apart there, and he promised himself he'd find a needle and thread later to fix it. But first, to see Freya.

He wandered down the hall and slid her bedroom door aside. It was dark, the only light came from the blue and green monitor lights, small and faint as they flicked on and off. Her breath was a quiet rasp, just discernable over the distant hum of computers and machinery. He could tell she was asleep, but only just, hanging onto the edge of consciousness by her fingertips.

"Freya?" Merlin pulled his shoes off and navigated the narrow room by memory. After so long here, he didn't even need the light to guide him. He knelt beside her bed and brushed a finger over her cheek, whisper light.

"Merlin...?" Her voice was hardly louder than her breathing.

"You okay?" He whispered.

The lights on the monitor flicked on enough for him to see her looking back at him. "'m tired. Are you okay? Is he okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Pendragon's gonna be fine. I think he's gonna hate his life for a few days, but he'll live." Merlin twined his fingers around hers, suppressing a wince at how thin her hands were. He kissed the back of her hand. "We're all safe as houses thanks to you, O Beautiful One."

Her laugh was barely a laugh. "The Beautiful One was Nefertiti, not Bastet."

"Yeah, but you're still beautiful." He blew a warm breath over her hands. They were so cold. "Remember when we were kids, and we snuck into the British Museum and spent the night wandering around, and then when morning was coming and we had to go, I couldn't find you?"

"Because I'd been staring at the statue of Bastet for so long. She was so beautiful, lit up by the security lights, just a black shadow in the darkness." Freya sighed, and Merlin heard her smile more than he saw it. "I fell in love that night."

"With the goddess of love."

"And protection. And war, among other things." Her fingers tightened around his. "Curl up with me? I always sleep better when you're here."

"You think I'd say no to you?" Merlin kissed her on the cheek before slipping under the covers, being oh-so careful not to jostle her as he climbed over her and wound his arms around her. He snuggled up to her until his chest pressed against her back, then pulled the blankets around their shoulders. "How's that?"

"Wonderful. You're like that radiator Gaius used to have when we first got here." She folded her fingers around his arm..

"Is that all I am to you, then? A glorified heater?" He smiled and kissed the back of her head.

"You've found me out, then. Your body heat. That's all I want you for," she chuckled. Her body relaxed as she edged toward sleep again. Her fingers were lax against his arm.

"You beautiful liar," Merlin said. He nestled closer to her, breathed in her clean, medicinal scent.

She made a noise like laughter. "Show me what the lights were like up there."

"You saw them," Merlin said. "You probably saw more of them than I did."

"Through cameras. That's not the same thing," Freya said. "I want to see them the way you did. Will you do that for me?"

"Of course I will." Merlin let go of her hand and raised his own, stretching it toward the open space past the bed and whispering words of power. Motes of light pulled away from the monitors and all the little screens that dotted the room, coalescing in mid-air, swirling around each other in a glowing mist until they finally came together, forming the London skyline in miniature. The motes winked off and on again, buzzing about, tiny versions of the traffic and other signs of life Merlin had seen that night.

"It's beautiful," she sighed.

"Not as beautiful as you are," Merlin said. He let the illusion die and took her hand again.

"You're such a flatterer."

"I don't flatter you enough," he said. "I love you. You know that, right?"

"Of course I do," Freya said, her voice soft as silk. "I love you, too." She was quiet after that, sinking into sleep, her breathing quiet and even.

Merlin blinked back tears as he listened to her. He bit his lip to keep himself awake, despite how warm and comfortable he was, tried to forget how peaceful he felt with Freya in his arms. Because she wouldn't be there for much longer. She was falling apart, despite everything Gaius was doing. Merlin was tired, but he didn't want to sleep. He wanted to stay awake, wanted to imprint everything about Freya permanently into his memory- her scent, the feeling of her fingers against his skin, the sound of her breathing. He wanted all of it, to keep her locked up in memory, so maybe, just maybe, the memory of her would hold back the tide of agony that would wash over him when she was gone.

* * *

Arthur didn't wake up all at once. It was a slow process, one where he wasn't sure if he was dreaming or if he was hearing actual people making actual conversation. It would have helped if he hadn't felt like he was floating. But then, whatever was causing that odd sensation kept the pain at bay. He felt it burn like fire in his chest now and then. His heart would hammer in response, his breathing speed out of his control, and the voices would rise in response until something made it all fade away again.

He woke again, a long time after… he wasn't sure after what. His memories were cloudy and vague, like the film on his tongue had spread to his brain. He lay still, trying to sort through the foggy sensations and unfamiliar voices filtering into his consciousness. There was an older, dry voice from somewhere in western London and a younger, mellow voice with the lilting remnants of a Welsh childhood.

"He's waking up."

"I can see that, Merlin," the older voice said. There was a hint of exasperation there, and a bit of fondness, too.

There was no sense in playing dead since they knew he was awake, so Arthur opened his eyes. Focusing took an age, and the room threatened to start spinning around him until he dug deep and gathered enough strength to sort out up from down, right from left, and counted two men in the room with him. He had been right in his assessment of their ages. The older voice belonged to a man in his sixties who was staring at a bedside monitor. His gray hair was pulled back in a ponytail and his clothes were at least ten years out of date. Maybe it was the drugs talking, but Arthur felt like he had seen the man before, a long time ago.

"I think he's actually awake this time."

Arthur blinked and focused on the second man, a kid, really, perched in a nearby chair. He might have been twenty-two at most, pale-skinned and underfed. His clothes were worn and hung off of him like he was wearing his big brother's castoffs. The blue eyes were bright, though, and curious when they looked back at Arthur. "Hey." The kid- Merlin, he guessed- grinned at him. "Awake and aware at last. You've been out of it for a while. Had it kind of rough, though, when you got here. You want some water?"

His throat was too dry for speech so he nodded, a slight movement just enough to indicate 'yes'.

Merlin disappeared from his line of sight for a minute, then returned with a bright red plastic cup with a straw sticking out of it. "Let's sit you up a bit more, 'kay?" He didn't bother waiting for Arthur to agree before adjusting the head of the bed so Arthur could drink without choking. The water was cool and tasted of carbon filtering, though the kid only let him have a few sips before taking it away.

"Thanks," Arthur said.

"Yeah, no problem." The kid took the cup back and stepped aside so the older man could check on Arthur, a process that involved too much poking and prodding for his taste, but in the end, the old guy pronounced that Arthur was on the mend and would be up and around in a couple of days. "How do you feel?"

"Like hell," Arthur rasped. The pain in his shoulder had lowered to a mild throb that might have been bearable, even without the drugs. "Where am I?"

"Gaius's lab. That enough info?" The kid grinned and brushed at his face with a hand covered up by a too-long sleeve. "We're way below London, if that helps. In a set of old Underground tunnels that were abandoned a century or so ago, then got turned into one thing, then another and another until we got here and claimed it. It's safe. No one's going to find you down here."

"Oh. That's good." Arthur looked around the room and took it all in. The walls were made of old bricks painted white and washed with a warm light by the row of sun lamps mounted along the far wall over a double row of shelves stuffed with pots and tins of plants. Exposed pipes and wiring criss-crossed along the ceiling, while the floor was a jigsaw of mismatched tiles. Along the wall closest to Arthur's head, a table was covered with gadgets, monitors, and a holoprojector or two. All in all, the place felt a little like a mad scientist's lab crossed with a doctor's office, but somehow the blend set his mind at rest. Maybe it was the plants, or maybe it was the blue eyes he found himself staring into when he looked back at the kid.

"It's not really what you're used to, is it?"

"No." His eyes closed of their own accord. Too bad. He actually wanted to stay awake a bit longer, start to figure the place out.

"Arthur?" Merlin's voice sounded far away, and Gaius's response was even farther.

He drifted for a while, maybe a minute, maybe a day. He couldn't tell. But when he woke again Merlin was there still. Again? Same chair, same clothes, and with a tablet in hand with a video playing silently, sending a dance of color across the kid's face.

Arthur tried to raise his head to look around. It was one of his more ill-thought out plans, the movement pulling at damaged muscle and bones he wished he could forget. He groaned.

Merlin looked up and tugged at his earbuds. "You're awake again. You going to make sense this time?"

"Maybe?" He glanced around, eyes landing on a bottle of water on the table. It would probably be warm, and have that vaguely metallic flavor peculiar to filtering, and it would taste wonderful. Too bad it was out of his reach.

"Thirsty?"

He nodded and Merlin poured some of the water into a cup and dug a new straw out of a box before holding it for Arthur to take, one eyebrow quirked up as though asking, _'Do you need help?'_ He took the cup, and through sheer force of will he held it steady enough to drink it all down. "What happened?" Arthur asked after a moment or three of silence. "How did I get here?"

Merlin plopped back down on the chair, pulled his feet up, and wrapped his arms around his knees. "We waited for you at the rendezvous point until Freya realized something had gone wrong. She managed to find traces of you here and there, enough to get an idea of where you were headed until you made it to the lower city. Then she could follow you no problem. It's easier for her to ride the networks down there- fewer security protocols. You blacked out when we found you, so we got you stabilized, and then Will and Gwaine helped carry you down here." Merlin tapped his fingers against his knees, the kind of unconscious habit Arthur recognized from a place and time he couldn't quite recall. "That was a couple of days ago. You've been mostly asleep since then."

"Sorry to be a bother." Arthur rubbed his eyes with his good hand and sagged against the pillows, taking a long, careful breath. It only pulled at his shoulder a little, so he took another for good measure. "I don't know how they knew where to find me, but there were two guys waiting for me where we were supposed to meet. Guys with guns and bullets. How old-fashioned is that?"

"Just like the Old West," Merlin smirked.

"Yeah. Imagine my surprise." Arthur's already wan smile finished fading away. "I started running the second I realized they weren't you. Guess I didn't go fast enough. Not sure how I lost them or where. Must've, though, since they didn't finish the job."

"We didn't find anyone but you out there."

"Good." He sighed and blinked up at the ceiling. Things were getting floaty again. "Why'd you bring me here?" Arthur asked.

"What else were we going to do?" Merlin said. "Leave you there to die behind a lousy Chinese place? No, we couldn't do that. We've been talking to you long enough to know what sort of man you are. You wouldn't rat us out, even if you did know where 'here' is."

"Nice to know you care," Arthur said.

"Freya cares. That's good enough for me."

Arthur wanted to continue the conversation, find out more about Freya and the underground station they were in, but sleep was calling to him again, and he was too tired to resist.

* * *

 _A/N: The song Merlin recalls is 'A Little Priest' from the musical Sweeney Todd._


	2. Chapter 2

Two more days passed before Gaius allowed Arthur out of bed, and that was only to shuffle about to the bathroom and find a change of clothes. Not that he found the clothes himself. Merlin brought those in, a few sets of worn out trousers, t-shirts, and hoodies that were probably fourth-hand and older than he was. They fit well enough, if he was willing to ignore the too-long sleeves and the too-tight waistband of the jeans. That would change if he spent much time among these people. They all looked thin and underfed.

"Are you sure you're feeling all right, Arthur?" Gaius asked. "I'd feel better if you stayed off your feet for another day or so." The old doctor fussed with the bandages around Arthur's shoulder one last time before he let the younger man shrug back into his sweater.

"I'm feeling well enough, thank you. I need to get back on my feet. All this lying about is going to drive me nuts." Arthur offered Gaius what he hoped was a reassuring smile as he settled his arm into its sling. "I haven't had this much time off since I was a little kid.

"Well, then," Gaius huffed, one eyebrow rising to a threatening level. Arthur tried to keep it from bothering him. "I suppose if no one's going to listen to an old man, then I'll just go do something else. I have a hundred things to do. As do the rest of us." Gaius turned his gaze on Merlin, who was perched in a chair at the far end of the room.

"I'll get to it," Merlin said.

"See that you do," Gaius said before he turned back to Arthur. "I know you're young, and you think that you know everything, Arthur, but for once just listen to an old man. You're not as healthy as you think you are, and if you push yourself too far, you're going to collapse and undo all the work I've done these past few days. So if you feel tired, for god's sake sit down." His medkit closed with a _hiss-snap_ , and he locked it with a quick thumb swipe across the biometric lock. "If you need me, I'll be in Freya's room."

Arthur waited until the old man had left before saying anything. "He's so terribly cheerful, isn't he?"

"He's been through a lot lately. If you ask him, we're a bunch of dumb kids out to give him a heart attack," Merlin said.

"And are you?" Arthur's smirk faded at the guilty look that flashed across Merlin's face, fading as quickly as a shooting star.

"Not intentionally."

" _None of us did it on purpose,"_ a frail, feminine voice said. The sound echoed out of a speaker in the corner, thin and ghostlike. _"He knows that, Merlin."_

"Yeah, well, you and Will didn't do all that to yourselves." Merlin seemed to collapse in on himself. The light in his eyes dimmed.

" _Neither did you. Are you ever going to believe me when I tell you that?"_

"Maybe."

"Alright, so call me clueless, but what's going on here?" Arthur spoke up. Between the spectral voice and the references to people and events he knew nothing about, Arthur felt like even more of an outsider than he already was.

"Oh. Sorry," Merlin ducked his head and shot Arthur a sheepish grin. "Arthur Pendragon, meet Freya, our resident ghost in the machine."

The spectral voice laughed. _'I'm just down the hall, talking through the intercom, Arthur. I'm… I'm not mobile these days. But Gaius says that you're getting better, right?"_

"Well, yes. I suppose I am." Arthur directed a confused glance around the room, unsure of where he was supposed to be looking, or if there was anything for him to look at at all, besides the complicated emotions running across Merlin's face.

" _Good. Then you can come and see me. It'll be nice to meet you in person after all this time."_

"'After all this time'? I've been talking to you for all of thirty seconds. I wouldn't call that a long time," Arthur said.

" _You know me, Arthur. By a different name and with a different voice. You know Bastet, don't you?"_

"Of course I know her. She's the one who-" Arthur stopped as the gears clicked into place. He glanced at Merlin, saw the sparkling amusement in the kid's eyes. " _You're_ Bastet!"

" _You sound surprised."_

"I am. I thought, well. I always thought I'd find you- _if_ I ever found you- I'd find you in some other megacorp somewhere. Out in New York, maybe, or Tokyo. Not… here," he finished lamely. If he'd said much more, he'd have brought up their poverty and their subterranean circumstances like it was a bad thing. Which, according to every Londoner of the upper-city, would have been the end of the world.

Bastet. She was, according to authorities, one of the most wanted cybercriminals on the matrix and as elusive as one would expect from someone named after a cat goddess. Over the past couple of years, she had been spreading her own brand of mischief all around the world, exposing conspiracies and immoral acts committed by corporations and governments alike, convincing men like Arthur's father that no secret was safe. And really, no secret had been safe, because no matter how much Uther Pendragon strengthened the security protocols, barely a week would pass before Bastet or her matrix-based minions wormed their way back in.

It was for the best, though. If it hadn't been for the constantly shifting passcodes and protocols, Arthur never would have received that file. It was a mistake, he knew. The report was meant for his father, but Arthur hadn't known that when he opened and read it. Then he hadn't believed what he had read until he made his way down to the most secure levels of the Pendragon Corp's R&D department.

Arthur didn't know what his father was planning with the experiments he found there, but they weren't something that any moral and sane person would do to another human being, let alone the half dozen children Arthur found hooked to an array of computers, like a flock of tiny butterflies ensnared in a massive spider web.

He'd fled then, and once he decided that he wasn't going to throw up after all, Bastet made her first contact. Perhaps she'd sent him the file in the first place. He had never bothered to ask. Its origin had seemed inconsequential compared to the horrors it revealed. In the months that followed, Uther had suspected some sort of leak, but he hadn't thought that his own son would be the source. Not until Arthur had compiled his carefully gathered evidence and sent it to news agencies around the world.

Then the assassins came after him, and Bastet had made Arthur disappear.

" _That's part of the reason your father and his ilk haven't found us. We're like ants in the pavement. They don't expect to find threats literally beneath their feet. And I'm something of a special case."_

"What do you mean?" Arthur asked.

" _Come and see. It's easier if I show you,"_ Freya said.

"Is Gaius still there?" Merlin asked as he rolled to his feet and sauntered across the room to help Arthur up.

" _He is, but he's less aggravated than you think he is, Merlin. Come on. I've missed you."_

If there was a way to get a reluctant boy to do anything at all, it was to have a girl tell him that. Freya might have said, 'I missed you. Let's get a drink', or 'I missed you. Let's jump off this bridge' and either way, the reaction would have been the same. Arthur smiled as Merlin pulled him to his feet, only wincing a little when the movement pulled at his injured shoulder.

"Follow me," Merlin said.

That passed through a sliding door and into a long hallway lit by track lights that lent the space a soft amber glow. It might have felt homey, if home to Arthur wasn't more along the lines of a top floor flat with a dazzling, 360-degree view of London. _'Not that I'm ever going to see that again...'_ A pity, really. He and Morgana had planned to get together with the gang to watch the last episode of that telenovella she liked so much. There was a pang of loss in his gut at the thought- not because he was missing the show, but because he was already missing her. As much of a pain as Morgana could be, she was still family.

She missed their breakfast date that fateful morning. He'd carved out the time and convinced her to meet him because he knew it would likely be the last time he'd ever see her. The message she had sent to postpone it was apologetic. Early morning business, she had pleaded, and promised to reschedule. She'd probably been enjoying herself with some man and hadn't wanted her morning to end quite yet. He couldn't blame her. Morgana hadn't know that day was going to be any different.

Arthur shook his head and tried to think of something else. "How deep underground are we?"

"About fifty meters. Don't ask me how Gaius found it. He just did. We've been living here for about ten years. Maybe eleven."

"Most of your lives, then?"

"About half of them, yeah." Merlin glanced back and paused, waiting for Arthur to catch up. "It's not so bad. But I guess you're used to a bit more luxury."

"A bit more," Arthur said, giving Merlin a tired smile. "How many of you are there?"

"Five of us. Gaius and me and Freya were the first ones, then Will wandered in about five years back, and Gwaine a couple of years after that. We try to keep our physical heads down. The digital stuff's all on Freya." He stopped and slid another door aside, gesturing for Arthur to go in first.

The room was a little brighter than the hallway, lit by a couple of sun lamps and the cool blue glow of monitors. It was the opposite of the room Arthur had woken up in. That room had been bright and filled with plants, its decor chaotic and warm. It felt cold in here, though the temperature hadn't changed.

At the far end, a small figure rested on a biobed. Arthur thought it was a child at first, then he got closer, saw the feminine form was mature, if emaciated. Multiple tubes snaked over and around her, reminding him all too much of those children in the R&D labs at Pendragon Corps. Faint lines of circuitry- bioware- traced up her arms, her neck, and along her shaven scalp. As often as he'd seen such modifications to the human form, Arthur didn't think he'd ever get used to even a few lights glowing under people's skin. This girl was riddled with them. It probably went deeper, too, into her brain and vital organs.

Merlin sidled past Arthur and plopped into one of the chairs by the bed and took the girl's hand. Just then, Arthur saw two things. The first, was that Merlin was in love with the girl. The second, was that she was dying.

"Hello, Arthur," she said, her voice even more fragile than it had been over the intercom.

"You're Freya, then?" He took the chair that Gaius appeared out of the shadows to offer, taking a deep breath to ward off the lightheadedness their short journey had inspired.

"I am." She smiled at Arthur, her too thin fingers folding around Merlin's. "You were probably expecting someone a lot different, weren't you?"

"Um, yeah, actually. I'd pictured you as a bit more menacing." Arthur's smile was almost genuine. He couldn't manage anything more than that. "Some femme fatale like you'd see in the movies, with dangerous shoes and too much eye makeup."

"I used to wear too much eye makeup. Couldn't do the dangerous shoes, though. Not coordinated enough for that." She gave him a wan smile, her free hand reaching up to adjust the nasal cannula under her nose. "I bet you have a few questions."

"Only about a million," Arthur said.

"I'll answer what I can."

"You should be resting, Freya," Gaius said. He shot both him and Merlin warning glances, and that eyebrow rose threateningly again.

"I've spent all day resting. I want to talk to real people." Freya gave the old man a weary smile and he backed off a step. "Besides. Arthur has questions, and he deserves some answers. He gave up everything for this."

Gaius's lips twisted into a half-irate, half-defeated expression. "All right, then. One hour. Neither of you is well to start with. I doubt you'll last even that long. And Merlin has things he needs to do today." He brushed at the hem of his shirt and tried to scowl at them, but that look faded once he saw the sheepish look on Merlin's face and the way he was all but clinging to Freya's hand. "Call for me if you need anything, then. I'll be about."

"Sorry about that," Merlin said once the old doctor had left. "He's a bit protective."

"Doesn't bother me," Arthur said. He leaned forward in his chair and ignored its protesting squeak. "All right, then. Who you all are, how you ended up here, what you're doing… I want to know all that. Eventually. But first…" He paused and licked his lips. "What were they doing to those kids in my father's R&D labs? In all my investigations, I only found the barest of hints and even that didn't make sense to me. You knew they were there. You must know what it was all about."

"Gets right to the point, doesn't he?" Merlin said.

"He does," Freya said. She shifted around so she could see Arthur better and be more comfortable while she was talking. Assuming she could ever be comfortable in the first place. "What was happening to those children is part of our story- Gaius's and Merlin's and mine. And it's a long, complicated story with lots of twists and turns so be patient. There's no easy way to tell it."

"All right," Arthur said. "I'll try not to interrupt."

"I like the emphasis on the 'try'," Freya said. She gave Merlin a questioning look, her fingers twitching around his.

"Go on," Merlin said. "It'll be fine."

"Right." She stared at the wall for a moment, then looked back at Arthur. "I'll start with how I knew they were there, and how I could always get through the Pendragon Corps's security system, no matter what."

"Yeah. You were a right pain in the ass about that," Arthur said.

"I know." An impish grin pulled at Freya's lips. "I could do it because once upon a time, I was part of the mainframe there."

" _Part_ of the mainframe?" Arthur blurted. "Don't you mean you worked on the mainframe?"

"No, Arthur. Thank you for interrupting already." She glared at him and sighed. "I was _part_ of the mainframe. Part and parcel to it. For all intents and purposes, my brain was just another computer. You know how some people have headwear installed that lets them jack directly into the matrix?"

"Yeah," Arthur said. "I think it's kind of revolting. It's not like there's a lot of space in your head to shove circuitry into without cutting something else out. I mean, is it really worth losing a part of yourself for the sake of a good connection?" He had only seen a few of those crazies out and about, with the neon colored dataport covers tucked into their skulls like it was some fancy new jewelry that all the kids would be sporting in a few months. The intra-cranial datajacks upped their connection speeds exponentially, but Arthur had always wondered what the real cost had been. Did those people lose part of themselves? Did they think it was worth it?

"Depends on the person, I suppose," Freya said. "And how much they've let the matrix become part of their lives. It's their choice, though, and something they feel is worth the price. For me, though, it wasn't a choice. I wasn't old enough to choose. This was all done to me." She turned her head just for enough for Arthur to see the edge of a dataport, just behind her left ear. There was a little blue light blinking in one corner.

"Who did that? And why?" Arthur asked.

Freya and Merlin shared a long look. "Your father's scientists did it when I was about seven. It was part of a program to develop an A.I."

Arthur recoiled. "Artificial intelligence doesn't exist. It was banned decades ago by the UN and no one's touched it since that incident in Seattle."

"Your father's trying," Merlin spat. "He's been working on it for years."

"How can _you_ possibly know? What do a bunch of-" Arthur snapped his mouth shut on the next words- _gutter rats-_ and took a breath to calm himself. Best not to insult the hosts who were holding him in an undisclosed, subterranean location. "Pendragon Corp runs a lot of studies on a wide array of things. Weapons, matrix security, information systems. What makes you think my father was- is- trying to develop A.I.?" Arthur leaned back in the chair a little too fast. The motion sent a spike of pain through his shoulder. He took a deep breath to push it away and calm himself. He knew how to read people, and both Merlin and Freya were showing nothing but outraged sincerity. "Sorry. I should hear you out before I try to judge. Keep going."

"Have you ever heard of the concept of the 'ghost in the machine'?" Freya asked. Arthur shook his head. "It's an old philosophical theory- dualism, where the mind and body are separate systems interacting with each other a mysterious fashion but that interaction produces consciousness. In the really short version of it, anyway. Bring it up to modern times, and it refers to a technological consciousness. A computer with a mind of its own."

"Artificial intelligence," Arthur said. "But it's-"

"Banned, yes. But what if someone lived outside the rule of law and developed one?" Freya asked. "Imagine what they'd be able to do with it."

Arthur had a good imagination, and he let it tackle the problem, applying it to everything that popped into his head, and finally using some of the stuff he'd learned in school. "Banks, military, governments… With a hidden A.I. system working for him, someone would be able to hack through security systems like they were jumping a picket fence. It might not even matter if there _were_ security protocols if artificial intelligence could just bend the matrix around itself like the protocols weren't even there." He swallowed back the bitter taste growing in his mouth. "But how do you know that's what Uther's doing?"

"Those kids you found?" Merlin chimed in. "They were part of the experiment. But they weren't the first ones. Not by a long shot."

Arthur stared at Merlin, then at Freya. For a long time. He could put two and two together as well as the next man, but he didn't like the answer he was getting, like it was adding up to five and no known arithmetic would get him back to four. "You were the first experiment, weren't you? The successful one."

"Not the first," Freya said, "but I was the success. The only one so far."

Arthur moved to get up, then stopped. Between the pain and the answers, his head was spinning, and he would only end up in an inglorious heap on the floor if he tried to walk away now. "But why kids? Why's he using kids? None of the ones I saw in the lab could have been more than ten."

"Children's minds are wide open, Arthur." Merlin's tone was gentle, like he was trying to explain a hard concept to a little boy. "Their brains have so many more connections than an adults that they can learn almost anything. That's what your father's scientists needed to accomplish his goals- quick minds that can bring order to a system. Did you ever wonder why the matrix is so decentralized?"

"For security reasons," Arthur said, though he doubted Merlin was going to say that was the real reason.

"That, too," Merlin said. "But it also helps keeps the matrix from organizing itself and spontaneously generating an A.I. The human brain was like that once, a collection of neurons and synapses that reacted to its environment in order to survive. Then, over time, it organized itself until it reached a tipping point. Once it hit that, consciousness developed. We became sentient. We stopped reacting to what was around us and started changing our environment ourselves."

"If the matrix reaches that same tipping point, it could become sentient, too," Freya said. "And if someone controls that, they could control the fucking world."

This time, Arthur made it to his feet, lurching across the room to rest his forehead against a cool panel on the wall. "I was the VP of this company. How did I not know this? How did I not see what was under my nose?"

"He didn't want you to know. Didn't want you to see what he was doing until he was sure about you," Freya said. "He couldn't be sure you'd fall in line with his plans, so he waited. In the end, it turns out that you weren't trustworthy. Not for him, anyway. You exposed part of his secret. He won't be able to proceed for a while, but eventually he'll buy off the investigators and smooth things over with the press. Then he'll be able to start it all back up."

"He almost succeeded once before," Arthur said mostly to himself. "Why you? Why did it work with you?" His voice was hoarse and barely carried across the room.

"What?"

He turned back to regard them both. They looked so damned _earnest_ , like they believed the whole thing, and if this story was one big pile of shit, then they'd bought into, too. "If Uther's trying to develop and AI in spite of a dozen worldwide laws against it, then why did it work on you, and why are you here and not wired to the mainframe at Pendragon Corp? You're trying to sell me on a pretty amazing story. You'd better have some amazing proof to back it all up."

Freya didn't look surprised by his outburst. She looked like she had been expecting it. "Merlin and I are here today because Gaius got us out of there. He was a researcher who was assigned to the AI project part way through. After all this," she gestured up and down to the bioware lacing the length of her body, "was implanted. Unlike the rest of them, he still had a conscience. It took weeks of planning, but he got us out."

"He's a bloody saint, then," Arthur said. He leaned against the wall and pinched the bridge of his nose as if that would stop the headache from coming on. This was all too much. "But it doesn't explain why you were successful while all the others failed."

Merlin let out a brittle laugh. "This is the part that's really going to blow your mind."

Arthur glared at him. "Just spit it out, alright?"

"Fine," Merlin said. The smile faded from his face. "It was magic."


	3. Chapter 3

"Arthur?" Gaius's voice was soft, hesitant.

He refused to look back at the old man. It was enough that he could see Gaius's shadow projected against the wall. "What do you want?"

"To see how you're doing. You've had a long day, heard a lot of strange things." Gaius stepped into the room and slid the door shut behind him, closing out the light. He pulled a chair over to the bedside and sat down. "How are you feeling?"

Arthur sighed. He didn't want to talk about how he was feeling. Or about anything at all. He just wanted to curl up for a while and pretend none of it was real. Give himself time to process the insanity. Gaius just waited.

"How do I know that any of it's true? Uther's experiments? Artificial intelligence? M-" Arthur took a long breath to settle his uneasy nerves. "It all sounds so ludicrous. Like something out of some shitty holovid."

Gaius chuckled. It made Arthur want to reach out and smack him upside the head. "I felt the same way, once. Thought the reports were glitchy, or that the researchers had finally come unglued from being overworked. Then I saw him."

Arthur clenched his jaw. He didn't want to go through another round of this, didn't want to hear more _stories._ But the longer he thought about it, about everything he had seen and dug up in the past year, the more he realized that Bastet- _Freya_ \- had never lied to him. Every bit of evidence she had given him had been backed up by information he had dug up by himself later on.

Everything she said had been true. Even the things she and Merlin had told him tonight.

Even the magic.

 _Magic…_

It was one thing for Merlin to tell him about it, describe what happened, how he felt when he cast a spell. It was quite another to see the blue of Merlin's eyes turn to gold. To see flames rise from Merlin's hand and flow around his fingers before disappearing like they'd never been.

Arthur had told them to prove what they said was real, and they had done it.

He was still having trouble believing.

But Gaius was waiting for him to answer before he continued his story. "Who did you see?" Arthur finally asked.

"Merlin. He was so small. Ten years old and shut away in a laboratory, making all these little lights to amuse himself because no one else was there. He was so ready to love anyone who showed him an ounce of affection. He-" Gaius broke off, his voice thick. "Freya was there from time to time, but the other researchers never cared about him. Not really." Gaius sighed. "I don't know where Uther found those men or what he did to make them so… soulless. They hardly seemed human. I never could fathom how they could look at a child in pain and do nothing to help."

"How did you end up there, if you had a conscience and the others didn't?"

"Much the same way that you ended up here- because of an outside influence." The chair squeaked as Gaius moved in it. "I never found out who it was, but someone pointed me in the right direction. Eventually, they helped me free the children. Once the arrangements were made, I smuggled Merlin and Freya out and set fire to the labs." Gaius chuckled at the last, as though he were recalling some bygone schoolboy antics instead of an act of industrial sabotage. Years of work had been lost in the fire. Maybe that was a good thing.

"I remember that. My father said you'd lost your mind. They put a price on your head." Arthur shifted his weight onto his uninjured side and sat up. Carefully. His shoulder was still killing him, but he wanted to look Gaius in the eye. "And now that I'm thinking about it, I seem to recall that you'd been declared dead. Some sort of explosion, or something?"

"Oh, that," Gaius said. He grinned, then covered his mouth like he was embarrassed by the idea of being presumed dead. "Yes. That was a controlled blast and a bit of sleight of hand, as it were. The assassins had to believe that the children and I were dead, or they'd never stop hunting us. I knew a man who knew a man who could help me fake our deaths, and here we are."

"You risked a lot for a couple of kids you barely knew," Arthur said.

"Yes, I did. And I don't regret it," Gaius said. "They're the only family I have now."

"Yeah." That much was obvious. No matter how gruff the old doctor might be, his manner and voice always softened, even if it was just the slightest variation in tone, when he talked to Merlin or Freya. That softness, that warmth wasn't there when he interacted with Gwaine or Will. "But what about the… the m- the _magic."_ There. He had spit it out. "Where does it come from? How does it happen? Why did Pendragon Corp need it to create an AI? It doesn't make any sense. None of it does."

Gaius chuckled. "I've often wondered the same thing, and believe me, I've spent years doing research into it. I have poked and prodded the children, examined their blood and DNA so many times I could identify them based on their DNA profiles alone. But I've found nothing so unique about them that explains the magic. It is… ineffable."

"Ineffable?" He turned to look at Gaius, eyebrows raised. "You're a scientist. Or doctor. Whatever. And you're just going to stop looking for an answer because it's too mysterious for you to figure out?"

"The idea of magic has been around since humanity first attempted to explain things it couldn't understand." Gaius's smile spread a little wider. "I'm a well-educated man, but I'm not going to be able to solve a mystery like that in a matter of a few years. Perhaps one day, a quantum physicist will figure it out and pin it down to the mythical 'spooky action at a distance.'"

"Quantum physics. Right," Arthur said skeptically. He sat up a little more. "But the lab and the AI project? Why would they need magic? And how would they even know what they needed?"

"I can't answer the last question. I have no idea where they came up with the idea, how they knew magic was real, or indeed how they found Freya and Merlin." Gaius folded his hands in his lap, his shoulders hunched. "As for why they would need magic to create an artificial intelligence, well, I have a theory, but I wasn't there long enough to truly dig into that topic. And honestly, my mind wasn't on that. I was thinking about the children."

"Understandable. But what's the theory?"

"Though I have never found any physical or genetic difference in Merlin or Freya as compared to, say, me, there is a pronounced difference in how they interact with reality," Gaius said. "It may be that our current notions of science haven't caught up to their capabilities. A hundred years from now, there might be a rational theory of magic."

"A rational theory of magic?" Arthur's eyebrows rose with his skepticism. "That sounds completely insane."

Gaius laughed. "Einstein's theories sounded insane to the layman, too, until more than a hundred and fifty years' worth of science proved him right. Now we take things like relativity for granted. But what I'm trying to get at, Arthur, is that the _ineffable_ quality, that unknown factor in Merlin's brain structure or genetics gives him the ability to alter the fabric of reality, to bend some small part of time and space to his will. Because we have no other word for it, we call it magic.

"Freya had those same abilities, if on a smaller scale," Gaius went on. "Though the introduction of the bioware into her body robbed her of her magic, I believe those alterations allowed her to affect the matrix in a similar way to how Merlin affects the world around him. She dreams in binary, Arthur, and her descriptions of how she bends the matrix around herself mirror Merlin's descriptions of his magic."

Arthur let out a shaky breath. "This is insane. Utterly, fucking insane. Do you have any idea how ridiculous this all sounds?"

"Yes, I'm quite aware. I went through the same thing about a decade ago. I had the advantage of a good deal of scotch to puzzle my way through it."

"I don't suppose you have any scotch on hand right now?" Arthur asked. A good deal of alcohol sounded like the perfect antidote to the madness.

"I'm afraid not," Gaius said. "We have no alcohol here."

Arthur couldn't think of anything to say, so he kept his mouth shut. There was nothing, really, to say at all, and he had a feeling that if he tried to do something as paltry as use language to put what he was thinking into plain words it would come out in an unintelligible knot. He wasn't a poet, after all.

Gaius seemed to understand. "I'll let you rest, give you time to soak this all in. If you need anything, just call."

By the time Arthur summoned up the will to say 'thank you', Gaius was gone. Left to his own devices, Arthur couldn't shut off the cycle of his thoughts. It kept spinning from one ridiculous notion to the next. Artificial intelligence spawned by a human/computer interface. His own father trying to spur on such a thing. And magic…

He had fallen down a rabbit hole and couldn't even begin to figure out which way was up, let alone decipher a way out of there.

And deep down, some little part of him wasn't sure he wanted to find a way out at all.

* * *

"You alright? 'Cause you don't look alright."

Merlin dodged Will and his misplaced concerns and poured himself a drink. The stuff was supposed to mimic the long gone coffee of Gaius's youth. He said it was nothing like the original, but would pass if you poured enough sweetener into it. Merlin, having never known what the real thing was like, thought it was fine. With or without the sugar. It wasn't the flavor he was after, but the caffeine.

"You sure you should be drinking that?" It was Gwaine's turn for the mother hen routine. Merlin didn't buy it from either one of them.

"I'm fine, and it's fine, thank you very much," Merlin said. He folded himself up in the falling-apart recliner at the far end of the common room and closed his eyes to shut the other two out before running through all the basic meditation techniques Gaius had ever given him to make his too-tense back and shoulders unknot. It almost worked.

"I'm being dead serious, Merlin-" Will started.

"Or as serious as he ever gets," Gwaine interrupted.

"Shove it, you." Will smacked Gwaine upside the head as though that would silence him. "I am being serious, anyway. You don't look good. What is it, then? You feeling alright?"

"I'd feel better if you'd go away." Merlin tried for a menacing glare, but whether he just didn't have it in him or he couldn't direct one at Will because he was Will, Merlin didn't know. He hooked an arm around his knees in an attempt to not launch himself out of the chair. No use in trying to get away from either of them. They would follow him just about anywhere- even into the shower if they felt like it. Best to just get it over with and get on with the evening. He sighed. "It's just, you know, we've been talking to him for over a year now, haven't we? Arthur, I mean. You'd think he'd be more inclined to believe what we said, wouldn't you? Everything we told him was the truth, backed up by evidence, and not always evidence we gave him- evidence he found himself. I was just, I don't know... I don't know what I was expecting. Definitely not for him to think Freya and I are some kind of circus freaks."

"You told him about the magic, didn't you?" Gwaine smirked and flopped into a nearby chair. The old thing groaned like it was seconds from falling apart. Given that it was missing nearly as many screws as Gwaine himself was, it wasn't hard to imagine its sudden demise. "I'll tell you, Merlin," he said as he flung a leg over the chair's lone arm, prompting another metallic protest, "it threw me for about half a dozen loops when you told me about it. It's easy enough to believe someone would be batshit crazy enough to drill a hole in his head and shove some circuits in there." He winked at Will and earned a two-fingered salute for it. "But tell a man you can set things on fire with a word and a wave, or make a holovid without the benefit of a projector, and he's not likely to believe it, even if he can see it large as life in front of him."

"I can figure out that much, thanks. I'm not as stupid as all that." Merlin couldn't keep the sulk out of his voice.

"Aww, c'mon, Merlin." Gwaine gave him his best puppy-dog look. With his hair flopping around his face he looked like a half-witted cocker spaniel. Merlin couldn't help but half-smile at the thought. "I know you're not dumb. That label goes to Will."

"Fuck you, Gwaine." Will brandished a bottle in Gwaine's direction. "I'd throw this at you, but you're not worth the fizz."

"I wouldn't drink it anyway. Merlin. Those of us here?" Gwaine swirled a finger in a lazy circle to encompass the five of them- Gaius, Merlin, Freya, Will, and himself. "We know you. We all think the world of you. Granted, you're a bit weird, but no more than any of the rest of us. If His Nibs out there can't come to grips with who you are, then we'll put him out on his ear. See how long he can swim."

"Wouldn't be long," Will said. "He's so posh he wouldn't be able to tell up from down if he walked outside."

"Neither can you," Merlin said, hiding his smirk behind the cup and taking a long sip of the too-sweet beverage until his could control his expression again.

"I can't win tonight, can I? If I'm not getting it from Gwaine, I'm getting it from you." Will rolled his eyes and tossed his bottle in the sink.

"You're certainly not getting any from me," Merlin said, grinning. "You'll need to go find yourself a girl for that."

"There's the Merlin I was looking for." Gwaine quit torturing the chair by getting out of it. He reached over to slap Merlin on the shoulder, nearly tipping the younger man over in the process. "Cheer up. Either we'll have to keep dealing with Pendragon and get him to change his mind about us, or he'll be gone in a few days. Either way, it's going to get better. And with that, I'm going to bed. You all should, too."

"Yes, Mother," Will deadpanned. He dropped into the chair Gwaine had vacated once the door shut behind the other man. The chair groaned even louder, but held his weight. "You sure you're all right? Gwaine might talk a good talk, but he's a bit dense sometimes."

"No more than you, headcase," Merlin said.

Will opened his mouth to say something, thought better of it, and shut it again. "I was gonna say, 'it's not my fault', but it kind of is, isn't it?" He brushed his fingers over the dataport embedded just behind his ear. It was the reason he had ended up with them in the first place. A so-so street doctor had done a lousy job of implanting the thing, giving Will both a superior matrix connection and a killing fever. Gaius had fixed him up, and Will never bothered to leave after that.

"Yeah, it really is," Merlin said.

"Still freaks me out that you don't have any 'ware at all. In this day and age? That alone makes you strange." Will tossed the bottle cap at Merlin, who caught it with a breath of magic and spun it in slow circles. He dodged the cap around Will's fingers as the other man tried to catch it, carefully settling it on the tip of Will's nose until, with a word, he ended the spell and the cap fell to the floor and rolled away.

"It's because of the magic. You know that. Bioware drains your life force," Merlin said. His eyes followed the trail of the cap to its endpoint under a table. He rubbed his fingers together to fend off the burning feeling the magic always inspired. "Stick enough of that stuff in me, and it'd kill me."

Just like it was killing Freya.

"I know that," Will said. "I still think you're weird."

"I'm not the one walking around with an extra hole in his head." Merlin got up out of the chair and dumped the rest of his drink down the drain. He rinsed the cup and set it aside.

"Never going to let me live that down, are you?"

"Nope. Why would I ever do that?" Merlin flashed Will a smile that quickly faded. "I think I'm going to go to bed," he said, which was as good as code for 'I'm going to sit with Freya for a while'.

"Okay. Good night, then."

"Yeah. You, too." Merlin slipped out the door and headed down the hallway toward Freya's room. She was still awake when he entered. "I thought you'd be asleep by now."

"I tried. Couldn't stay asleep, though." Her voice was stronger than normal, edged with rare irritation. "Can't keep an eye on things as well when I'm asleep."

Merlin sat down in the bedside chair and propped his chin up with his hands, his elbows resting on the edge of the mattress. "What's out there that's so urgent you can't take a break?"

Freya's brow creased into a scowl. "The news. Haven't you been paying attention?"

"I'm not connected like you are, love. What's going on?"

"Pendragon Corp. They're under investigation, of course, by all sorts of authorities. The British government, the police, and just about everyone else you can think of."

"We expected that," Merlin said. "So what's wrong?"

Freya's eyes were hard. "Uther opened the company up to their investigations. The whole thing- the arcology, secondary sites, their _files_. Everything."

"That's good, isn't it?" For half a second, Merlin wished he had her digital capabilities, if only so he could keep up with her train of thought. There were disadvantages to his non-connectivity, and sometimes it made him feel like a right idiot next to her. "They'll find those kids and get them out of there, and they'll put Uther in jail for the rest of forever for everything he's done, right?"

"That's the problem. They're not _finding_ anything. Those kids, the files about them, the files about the project itself- none of it's there." She beat her hand against the blanket in frustration, though it didn't do anything more than make a soft _thump_. "I've even gone back in there myself to look, and there was _nothing._ Not a trace. No project summaries, no security footage, no progress reports. Absolutely nothing to do with the AI project we'd been tracking since before we contacted Arthur. It's all just disappeared! I don't understand how."

"Do you think Uther had it all wiped? You've got to admit that his tech people are pretty good. Maybe he just had them clear a particular section of files after Arthur sent the report?" Merlin took her hand and squeezed it gently, like he could send encouraging thoughts via touch.

"I doubt it. I mean, the deletion would leave traces if you knew where to look, and if it happened after Arthur left, it would look pretty suspicious."

"Did you look for that?"

Freya bit her lip, a contrite blush rising in her pale cheeks. "No, actually, I didn't. I was too busy following Uther's every move and trying to locate the files. The firewalls start to feel like a mirror maze after a while."

"Maybe that's a sign that you should stop for a while. Get some rest, take a step back, and then you and Will can look at all of this from a different angle. In the morning," Merlin said firmly.

"But-"

Merlin rested a finger against her lips. "Sleep now, investigate later. Uther Pendragon can't hide everything forever. Not from _you."_

"You're flattering me again," Freya said, a small smile tugging at her lips.

"Do I ever really stop?" He brushed a finger down her cheek. "Go to sleep, alright? You'll feel cleverer in the morning."

"I hate it when you're the logical one." She took his hand and snuggled into the pillows. "Will you stay here until I fall asleep?"

Merlin grinned. "I'll stay here all night."

* * *

 _A/N: I listen to a lot of music while I'm writing, and I enjoy putting together playlists that go along with the genre of the story, so here is the playlist I've put together (so far) for this story._

Alice - Paul Englishby

Houdou'on (Calm) - Emel Mathlouthi

Jupiter Shift- The Crystal Method

Building Steam with a Grain of Salt - DJ Shadow

4 O'Clock - Emily Autumn

Rev 22:20 - Puscifer

This is the New Shit - Marilyn Manson

Angel - Massive Attack

Becomes the Color - Emily Wells

Vide Domine - Industrial Monk

My Own Summer [Shove It] - Deftones

The Pretty Things are Going to Hell - David Bowie

Mary, Mary - Chumbawamba

Before I'm Dead - Kidneythieves

Eye - The Smashing Pumpkins

Angry Johnny - Poe

I'm Afraid of Americans (Nine Inch Nails V1 Remix) - David Bowie

House of Metal - Chelsea Wolfe

Where is My Mind? - Yoav feat. Emily Browning (from the Suckerpunch OST)

At Risk - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (from the Gone Girl OST)

Some Kind of Ghost- Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

Run Me Out- Zola Jesus, JG Thirlwell, Mivos Quartet

Tactical Dominance- Jack Tremmell

Let Me Follow- Son Lux  
Speed Kills- The Smashing Pumpkins


	4. Chapter 4

Three strange days passed. They weren't strange because there were ghosts or anything of such a gothic nature, but because Arthur had been dropped into the everyday lives of people who were about as alien to him as a group of Martians would have been. Gaius, at least, tried to make him feel like he fit in. Will tended toward the surly, Gwaine constantly mocked him, and he rarely saw Freya. And Merlin…

Merlin was as polite and as kind as any cordial stranger would have been to another, but he seemed to sense Arthur's unease toward the idea of magic. It would probably have helped matters if he didn't jump every time Merlin waved his hands and made some object move in an unnatural fashion. The others didn't. But then, they'd had time to get used to it. Arthur was trying, but not succeeding.

If only it weren't so damned _weird._

"Hey. You want to get out for a bit?"

Arthur looked up from the tablet with its endless news streams to find Merlin looking down at him with a toolbox in hand. "What? Why? Where are you going?"

Merlin shrugged, smiled. "Just up into one of the tunnels. Haven't you noticed the lights flickering lately?"

He had. The cool blue overhead lights were the worst, sparking on and off like lightning, while the sunlamps, slower to turn on and off again, merely dimmed for a moment before the power came back on. "It's hard to miss."

"Yeah, well, I get to go and fix it, since Will and Gwaine haven't gotten home yet, and Gaius doesn't do electrics," Merlin said. He shifted, nervously clasping the toolbox to his chest like it was some kind of shield.

"You can't just go down a tunnel on your own?" Arthur asked. He shifted, though, slowly working on standing up. He felt far better now, after another few days of rest, but he was still a bit stiff and more than a little sore, and getting out of these cramped rooms for a little while sounded a bit heavenly.

"Ah, no." Merlin's smile wavered. "I'm not supposed to go anywhere alone. Just… a precaution. We're not going far."

"Right." Security protocols, evidently. Harder to surprise two people than one, and given that Merlin wasn't skilled with weapons, he would need someone to watch his back. "Do I get a weapon of some kind, or am I just supposed to scare off intruders with my stunning good looks?"

Merlin blinked, then rolled his eyes. "It's not like that, it's-" he broke off and shook his head. "Nevermind. There's a stunner in here, if you're feeling insecure." He shoved the tool box toward Arthur, holding it there until he took hold of it, then spun on a heel and headed out the door. "'Stunning good looks'. That's an awful, awful pun. And if you actually meant it, then you're worse than Gwaine, and that's saying something."

"No, I didn't actually mean it. I'm happy with being better at a lot of things than Gwaine, but I'm not really interested in being that rampantly narcissistic," Arthur said. He followed Merlin out of the common room and down the hall, past the bedroom he was now sharing with Merlin, Gwaine, and Will, past Freya's room, and through the first of the doors that led to outside. It was something like an adventure, making it through the door. A passcode lock had kept him within the confines of this little set of rooms as effectively as his injury. Not that Arthur was anxious to go out and explore a bunch of tunnels when he didn't know where they were or where they led. It'd be just his luck to open a door and fall out into the Thames.

"He's not that bad." Merlin tossed a grin over his shoulder as they approached the next door. This one had a set of mechanical locks as well as an old retinal scanner. A set of faint lights, one on either side of the door, marked where the cameras were. Arthur wondered if Freya was watching them. She always seemed to be watching, whether she was awake or sleeping.

"Yeah, well he likes you. Half the time, it seems like he's ready to drag me out of here and dump me on the street somewhere. Honestly, I think he only puts up with me because Gaius would have his head otherwise," Arthur said. He tightened his grip on the toolbox as the door sealed shut behind them, leaving them standing in a too-dark and too-warm tunnel. "Do you have a light, then, or are we going to just walk along and hope we don't run into something?" Or some _one_.

"Of course I have a light," Merlin said. His voice was practically in Arthur's ear, and filled with mirth. _"Leoht."_

A little ball of pale blue light appeared in the kid's hand, just bright enough to illuminate his face with its eerie glow. Arthur winced at its sudden appearance, but couldn't help but stare as Merlin sent it floating up toward the tunnel's ceiling. It didn't grow much larger as it went, but it did get brighter, until it was enough to reveal the tunnel's features about three meters in either direction.

"How's that?" Merlin asked, rubbing his hands together like they were cold.

"It's, uh, it's nice. Weird as hell, but nice. I suppose." He tightened his grip on the toolbox's handle. His palms were a little sweaty, and it was hard to say if it was from the tunnel's warmth, his own somewhat shaky state of health, or the sheer weirdness of the light. "It'll take some getting used to."

"Do you think you could?" Merlin asked as he started down the tunnel, the light following behind and above him like an obedient puppy, if puppies could glow bright blue and float along the ceiling.

"What, get used to you?" Arthur looked up. He'd been watching his feet to keep from tripping over whatever rubbish or cracks he figured he would find in the floor, but it was as clean and well-kept as the pavement in a better part of town. He tried to imagine one of them- Merlin probably, or maybe Will- out here sweeping the tunnel like they were suburban shopkeepers tidying up their front step before opening for the day. The image didn't quite take hold, though. It wasn't easy to imagine a handful of cyber-revolutionaries posing as regular people. "I suppose you can get used to just about anything that doesn't kill you."

"Just about," Merlin said. He slowed as they approached a fork in the tunnel, pausing for a beat to decide which path to take, then settled on the left path and started forward again. He glanced back over his shoulder, his eyes taking on an electric blue hue in the eerie light. "I don't suppose you've gotten used to me at all yet, have you?"

"I, uh, maybe? A little?" Arthur had meant for the answer to sound optimistic, but it came out too stuttery for that. Merlin's face fell, and he started to turn away. "It's just that it's strange, you know. Like if someone had told you that space aliens were living next door or something."

"Like space aliens?" Merlin quirked an eyebrow at him. "Would it help if I told you I come in peace?"

Arthur chuckled. "Sadly, I'm not a leader. I suppose I could drag you back to Gaius and tell him you're strange. Would that do?"

"Would do, if Gaius was our leader." Merlin ducked under a low-hanging collection of pipes and wiring. The light bobbed through it all.

"He's not?"

"No. He's like our dad or a nice uncle or something, but he doesn't tell us what to do. I mean, he'd like to, but legally we're all adults and can determine our own destinies, you know?" Merlin said. "I'm sure he'd prefer if we did something else. Make video games or whatnot, but he's kind of the one who got the ball rolling on this whole thing."

"Which whole thing?"

"The righting the wrongs, striking a blow for justice, robbing from the rich to give to the poor," Merlin said, a cheeky grin growing on his face. "That sort of thing. He's the one who took us out of the lab, after all. _And_ he set it on fire. We're just going by his example."

"I bet he loves to be reminded of that." Arthur stumbled and stopped, just shy of kicking Merlin's heels as the younger man came to a sudden stop in front of an anonymous panel. It looked that way to Arthur's eye, anyway, a matte gray door in a matte gray wall. Its scratches and scuffs didn't make it stand out any more than any other of the panels with their wear and tear.

"Not really," Merlin said, casting another grin at Arthur as he gestured for the light to come down from the ceiling and hover just above their heads. "He does that thing with his eyebrow where it crawls up his forehead like it's one of those fuzzy caterpillars. But don't tell him I said that. He wouldn't appreciate being compared to a bug. Open that for me, would you? And just hold that there for a bit?" Merlin gestured at the tool box in Arthur's hands.

"Hm? Oh. Yeah. Sorry." Arthur did his best to pull his gaze away from the light hovering just above Merlin's head, opened the box, and cradled it so Merlin would be able to reach whatever he needed. They fell silent again as Merlin worked, tugging at wires and cables, snipping one here and reconnecting two more over there until he was satisfied, then he closed the panel and moved on down the row.

"You're staring again."

"What?" Arthur blinked and tried not to look like too much of an idiot.

"You're staring," Merlin repeated. "At me. Or the light, anyway. Keep that up, and I'm going to start calling you a bug." He paused, then said, "Do you have a favorite one?"

"What, a favorite bug?"

"Sure. Why not? Gotta make some sort of conversation, yeah?" Merlin asked. He flicked the little ball of light further down the tunnel, stopping it over yet another anonymous panel, this one tall enough to be called a door. "How about one that sticks out in your memory? And I'm not talking about cockroaches, either. Cockroaches are everywhere, and they're boring. Well, maybe more gross than boring, but you know."

"I guess?" Arthur shrugged and caught the door before it could close as Merlin slipped under and behind a row of narrow PVC pipes, sucking in his stomach just a little bit more to gain a hairsbreadth more purchase between wall and plastic.

"A bug that sticks out in my mind, then." He idly handed Merlin a wrench as he thought back. Life in the upper echelons of British society meant he didn't encounter too many insects, unless one went to the zoo on a regular basis. "Well, we were in this cave once. My unit in the army, I mean. We were tracking down some rebels in this cave system. And I was walking along, light on the ground, and I realized I was about to walk into this rock formation that was sticking out. So I shine my torch on the rock, and six inches in front of my face there's this giant cave scorpion. With its legs and all, it was almost twice the size of my hand." Arthur held a hand up to show just how big the monster had been.

"Seriously?" Merlin's eyes widened, sparkling in the light of the little magic ball. "God, that sounds nasty! Makes the spider I found in Gaius's mint plants sound tiny." He laughed and wrenched a cover plate open, revealing a Gordian knot of wires underneath, tracing one line until he found the loose connection.

"Yeah, they grow that shit big on the other side of the world," Arthur said.

"Must be fantastic, to be able to see that kind of thing firsthand. Not just the bugs, I mean. All of it, you know. The people, the cities, the landscape." Merlin looked down at the wires so Arthur couldn't see his eyes, but his voice was a symphony of melancholy notes. "Must be so different from here."

"Yeah, it really is. They say people are the same everywhere you go, and I suppose they are to some degree," Arthur said. He held the toolbox out for Merlin to dig around in. "But that's all the stuff that's deep down, you know. The outer stuff, what you see and hear, that's different. Throws you for a loop if you're not ready for it."

"Did you get used to it?" Merlin asked. He plucked a thin blade out of the toolbox and set it against the loose wire, scraping the red casing away with a deftness that spoke of years of experience.

"What, the people being different?"

"Yeah." Merlin's head was bent over his work, and Arthur couldn't see his face.

"Yeah, I suppose I did, eventually." He smirked, wondering if Merlin had led him down this line of reasoning on purpose. "You can get used to just about anything after all. Even something as weird as magic."

Merlin chuckled. "I'm glad to hear that. It's nice to just be 'weird', and not 'freak'."

Arthur ducked his head. "I never called you a freak."

"It was on your mind," Merlin said as he rewound the wire and pulled a roll of black tape out of the toolbox.

"Oh, so you're a psychic, too?" Arthur said. He couldn't help but grin.

"No, I can't read minds," Merlin laughed. The sound felt too bright for this dank, dark tunnel.

"Good to know. Makes you seem a little less strange."

"A little." Merlin finished wrapping the wires, tossed the tape back into the box, and shimmied out from behind the pipes. "But I wouldn't want to _not_ be strange. Not-strange is boring. Who wants to be boring?" Merlin's grin flashed white in the dim light. "Come on, then. Let's get back. It's creepy down here."

The warm light and clean air of his new home was a relief after the dank darkness of the lower tunnels. It was almost as comforting as the sight of the sun itself. Almost. The lack of windows was still bothersome, as was the constant thrum and rattle of the machinery, pipes, and god-knew-what else was down there with them. The Underground lines? The Thames itself? Arthur had asked after their exact location a time or two, but received nebulous answers. _Under London. Britain. Earth._

"You're back. I thought that would've taken longer." Will poked his head into the room, eyes on Merlin, studying him like he was looking for something. Arthur couldn't tell what that something might be, but Will relaxed, satisfied by what he saw.

"It was just a few loose connections. Doesn't take that long to fix." Merlin said. "Did the power stop flickering, then?"

"Yeah. Steady as a rock, it is. Did he help out at all?" Will nodded in Arthur's direction.

"He was pretty good at holding the toolbox. I'm thinking of hiring him as my personal shelf." Merlin winked at Arthur and tossed him a bottle of water.

Arthur had to stretch to catch it. "It'll be the epitome of my life, I'm sure. Being vice-president of a global corporation will have nothing on being Merlin's shelf," he said drily.

"It'd keep you out of trouble," Will said.

" _Merlin?"_ Freya's ghostly voice didn't quite echo out of the speaker above. _"How far did you end up going today?"_

"Not too far. Just down to that one tunnel," Merlin said, like that explained everything.

" _Which one? The one with the box of rocks or the one with the cat?"_

"The one with the cat."

Arthur threw a confused glance at Will, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged as though to say, _'I don't know anything more about it than you do'._

" _Arthur, you don't have any other 'ware than the locator chip, do you?"_ Freya asked.

He unconsciously brushed a thumb over the spot on his right arm where the chip was. "Just the optics to correct a vision problem. I was going to update it with that new enhanced reality stuff, but never got around to it. Suppose I never will now." There were a lot of things Arthur had never gotten around to doing. Now he'd never be able to do any of them. "Why do you ask? I thought you had all my records."

" _I do. But sometimes people do things off the books,"_ Freya said. Arthur glanced at the datajack in Will's head. Yes, some things were way off the books. _"I was wondering because there was a ping on your location while you were gone. I know you turned the chip off the day you left the Pendragon arcology, and I'd jammed its signal, too. But since you were far enough away I suppose someone could have broken through that."_

"Who'd be able to do that, though?" Merlin asked. "I thought no one but a chip's owner could turn it off and on?"

"Once they reach eighteen, yeah," Will said. "If a kid gets a locator- and rich kids get them young in case they're kidnapped- the activation codes revert to them the day they turn eighteen. The parents aren't supposed to have access to the codes or the information anymore, unless the kid allows it."

"But with enough money or influence, an unscrupulous parent could get access to the codes, right?" Arthur asked. He felt his lunch start to curdle in his stomach at the thought of Uther being able to see everywhere he had gone, and who he had been with at University.

To say nothing of where he had been going over the past year….

"Shit."

"What?" Merlin asked, his eyes going wide.

"If Uther can pull up the data from my locator or the past year, he's going to know I was talking to you lot," Arthur said. "And he's got enough cash to buy off people, make them give him information or access he wouldn't- and shouldn't- have otherwise. What if he can use all that to find us here?" The curdles in his stomach froze into a sharp-edged chunk of ice at the thought. What if he'd brought hell down on these kids because he hadn't thought something all the way through? What if Uther was sending a strike team into the tunnels right now because he hadn't even thought of destroying the data from a device that tracked his every move?

 _StupidStupidStupid…_

" _He can't find us here."_ Freya's frail voice was as firm as it could ever be. _"I've spent ages locking this place down against virtual intruders. No one knows the matrix as well as I do, Arthur. I've locked doors no one would ever find to start with."_

"That's comforting," Arthur said, though he wasn't comforted at all.

" _You're safe as long as you stay here. We've been too careful for too long. One lapse on your part is not going to topple the whole house of cards."_

"But Uther is still looking for me. He still wants me dead," Arthur said. "Even I've seen the publicity blitz he's been on in the past few days. It hasn't bothered him a bit to say I was some drug-addled crazy person when I sent the report. He looks so fucking genuine when he says it all, too." He dropped into a chair. It screeched in protest, but didn't fall apart and send him sprawling to the ground.

He swallowed the knot in his throat and forced himself to at least try to think clearly. It was a hard battle. After years of trying to please Uther, it had all come down to one report exposing a series of horrific experiments to completely destroy any sense of fatherly pride or love Uther had ever held for him. It was a bitter pill to swallow after all that. "What about Morgana?"

"What's that?"

"What. About. Morgana?" Arthur repeated, his syllables clipped and precise. "It always seemed like it was me and her against Uther. I haven't seen her response yet."

" _There's only been one report. Sort of a footnote, really,"_ Freya said. _"She said she just wants you to come home so they can get you the help you need."_

"Great," Arthur spat. "My own sister thinks I'm a lunatic junkie. Can this get any worse?" He leaned back in the chair and looked at Merlin and Will in turn, but aside from Merlin uncomfortably shifting his weight and trying to shrink into himself, neither had an answer. "What do we do next, then? I've got a price on my head and a lot of people looking for me. I can't stay in here forever, but I can't leave if someone in Pendragon Corp can figure out a way to track me down if I step outside the door."

There was a long silence, then Will looked at Merlin, who shrugged. "Yeah, we could do that, I suppose," Merlin said. "We'd just have to go somewhere public. Plenty of cameras and people so there are a bunch of witnesses."

"Do you know a place?" Will asked.

" _Are you two talking about what I think you're talking about?"_ Freya asked.

"Yes, we are," Merlin said.

"What _are_ you talking about?" If there was only one downfall to being the new guy in a group of people who had been close for years, it was not having a clue what was going on when their conversations relied on things and happenings that had gone on years before Arthur had ever heard of Bastet and her ilk.

"Think Gwaine would be willing to lend a hand?" Will gave him a sunny smile. Arthur didn't like the look of that. Will's smiles consisted of grimaces and smirks. The sunny amusement the matrix jockey was sending his way was straight up disturbing.

"I think Gwaine would be happy to, in this case," Merlin said. "It'd get him out of here, give him a chance to get some fresh air and sunlight."

"Are you thinking about that place on off Barnet Grove? Where it meets up with Florida Street?" Will asked.

" _I think it would be perfect. There's plenty of traffic there, and it's known for being more than a little dodgy thereabouts. It'd fit in with the narrative Uther's building."_

"Well, that's decided, then," Merlin said. "I'll talk to Gwaine about it when he gets back, but I doubt he'll say no. He's always complaining about being bored around here."

"Why do I have the feeling that you lot have made some major decision about _my_ life, and you're not going to give me any say in the matter?" Arthur blew out an exasperated breath and scowled at the looks the other two gave him- Merlin's wide-eyed apology, and Will's smug grin.

"Probably because we are," Merlin said. "But we have to think of our own safety, too, Arthur. The longer we wait, the more likely it is that Uther will find us here. Freya's built a digital fortress, but our physical defences are a bit more porous. We can't be found via the matrix, but all a hacker would have to do is ping your chip a few more times to start triangulating your location."

" _So we'll either have to keep you locked up in here for the rest of your life,"_ Freya said.

"Which I'll object to."

" _Yes. Or we'll have to make you disappear."_

They both looked smug and amused. Smugly amused. Arthur would bet that Freya had the same look on her face. He narrowed his eyes at Merlin. "Tell me, in plain terms, what the hell you're talking about."

Will beat him to the punch. "It means we're going to have to kill you, mate. Sorry about your luck."


	5. Chapter 5

"So how long do you think you'd last before being underground would drive you batshit nuts enough to drive you out to the surface again?"

"Depends on who I'm stuck there with," Arthur said, leveling a glare at Gwaine. "If it were just you, I'd give it half an hour. Tops."

"Alright, then," Gwaine tapped away at his tablet. "We'll do this in six days."

"Why six?"

"Because six is the closest number on the screen, and I'm lazy," Gwaine said. Arthur rolled his eyes. Merlin laughed. "You've been down here for over a week already. That'd test the constitution of any posh bloke from up above, but you've been in the army. You've got a bit more stamina than most, so you'd last a bit longer before you'd want to come up for air."

"I'd like to think I have more than 'a bit' of stamina," Arthur said. "I might not have been in the army for that long, but it was enough that I could figure out how to live without air conditioning and caviar, thank you very much." He leaned back in the old chair until the squeal changed pitch to warn him that if he went much further, he'd fall backwards.

"Yeah, but you've got to get fresh air and light sometime," Merlin said. "We have all the sunlamps and air purifiers we need down here, but even we go up to the light cafes now and then. It's good to see people once in awhile, you know. Do some shopping, get food, see something besides each other's stupid faces."

"I get it, Merlin," Arthur said, raising a hand in surrender. "You come up for air sometime, and so does everyone else. But this plan you all have concocted is terrible. There are too many variables, and too much of a chance to get ourselves and a lot of bystanders killed."

"Do you have something better in mind?" Gwaine asked. "Look, to make it look real we've got to have a third party record the initial confrontation, right? Right. We can't just send a vid-file of your supposed death without something thinking that it's all a set-up and that you're out there somewhere, planning out a good time to cause mischief."

"That _would_ be the truth," Merlin said. He folded his arms on the table and rested his chin on them.

"And we don't want someone to figure that out," Gwaine said. "But if there's a third party- and a fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh- then there's a lot more evidence from some very uninterested parties to make our little plot look like it's the real thing. Unless you actually want me to shoot you in the head."

"If it got me away from you," Arthur muttered. Merlin was the only one who heard it, and he laughed. Arthur gave him a withering glare "Fine then. Multiple sources of information about the first part. But how do you plan to kill me off without actually sending me to see the pearly gates?"

Gwaine reached into a pocket and dropped two silvery bullets on the table. They rolled a few centimeters toward Arthur, glinting dully until they stopped. "You know why we freelancers use old-fashioned bullets to do jobs like this?"

"Because you're right aresholes who like to make your targets suffer a good long while before they shuffle off?" Arthur unconsciously rubbed at his shoulder, though the sudden ache had more to do with memory than any real pain. "Yes, I know why you use them. Old-fashioned bullets aren't as traceable as modern rounds. You can't make stunners or sleepers out of them. Not easily, anyway. So what are you proposing, then? You going to try to convince me that you have such good aim that you're going to shoot me, but miss any vital organs so I don't really end up dead?"

"Oh, my aim's that good," Gwaine grinned, "but I'm not going to get to show it off in this case. You see, these little beauties are sleeper rounds. They're not cheap, and I don't use them often, but my pal Merlin there's convinced me to use them on you. A quick double tap, a bit of previously donated blood, and some fussing with your locator chip, and _voila_. He's dead, Jim."

"You're real clever there," Arthur said. He wanted to smack the smug look off Gwaine's face, but leaned back and folded his arms across his chest instead. "So we could do that sort of thing down the hall, right? So why go up to the surface where we put you all at risk," he glanced over at Merlin, "along with anyone who happens to be either in the cafe or just walking by at the wrong moment? You keep telling me how you're so good at manipulating data streams and whatnot. Why can't we just make everything up?"

"Because we can't. Just make it all up, I mean," Merlin said. "In the real world, the matrix doesn't work like it does in holovid features. They can make up whatever dumb shit they want on those things, and the authorities in the story just go for it, because they're part of the story, and that's what the plot demands, yeah?"

"Yeah, so? What does that have to do with us?"

" _So information doesn't appear out of the blue, Arthur,"_ Freya chimed in at last, as though she knew her gentler tones would help keep him from walking out on them. Or maybe it was just because she was a girl, and in another room completely. _"If we make up a video of you being kidnapped in a light cafe, then we have to make up all the information that goes along with it. The people down here, in the lower levels, they don't get tracked as well as people who live above street level, but they're still tracked. Their vid-files and commlinks would have metadata attached to it, and that metadata will have links to everything that they've done on the matrix, and everything and everyone they've connected to since they first got online. And those connections would have connections, and so on and so forth."_

"What she's trying to say is that she can't just make up a bunch of shit and put it on a vid-file because your dad's tech people would take one look at it and figure out that it's been faked, and then we're right back to where we started," Will said from his supine position on the couch. Arthur thought he'd been asleep. "Only this time, they'd be working ten times as hard to find you because they'd know you're actively trying to hide from them."

" _We need people to see you leave- unwillingly- with Gwaine if this is all going to work,"_ Freya said _. "And we need the agents your father has hired to be able to catch sight of your location. They won't find you here, but they've been running all sorts of sweeps for you, and unless you want to spend the rest of your life inside our walls-"_

"I get it, alright?" Arthur lurched to his feet and stalked toward the door, stopping just short of walking out on them. He didn't like this plan. There were too many mistakes to be made, too many people that could come between Arthur and Gwaine, and anyone else who was involved. It would be too easy to get one of this group hurt or killed- especially Merlin and, to a lesser extent, Will. They were smarter and tougher than Arthur would verbally give them credit for, but neither one of them was any kind of real fighter.

But how else would he get the weight of the Pendragon Corp's goons off his back? He could hide down here all he wanted, but it would just take one scrap of luck, one fateful ping from his locator chip, or a few frames of video of him from an Underground CCTV camera to get all of them killed. Even if they didn't suss out Freya's secret identity, there would be nothing to stop them from firebombing this little hideaway.

"So in six days, we're going to let ourselves show up on security cameras in a light cafe on the surface, Gwaine's going to haul me out of there like I'm a juvenile delinquent for all the world to see, and then we're going to duck down to a tunnel somewhere so he can pretend to kill me, and you lot can dig the locator chip out of my arm, and take it and video evidence of my supposed death to my father. Right?" Arthur turned back to look at each of them in turn.

"Right," Gwaine said.

"That is an insane plan," Arthur said. "And I don't suppose you have a Plan B waiting in the wings?"

"None to speak of," Gwaine replied. "But on the bright side, If we pull this off we'll get the reward money your daddy's company has put on your head. We'll be able to buy something nice for once. Won't it be fun?"

* * *

A few days passed. Quickly at times, more slowly at others, but they passed all the same. And no matter what scenario Arthur considered in all that time, every one of them led down a dead end. Except for the one the kids had come up with. Without money, a place to hide, or any practical experience in London Below, as they called it, there was really nothing he could do but go out and get himself killed in a hurry. Unless he stayed down here, with Merlin and Gaius and the others, and followed their plans to the letter.

Never mind the fact that those letters involved going from A to B via Q, L, and C.

He poured himself a cup of water. He was getting used to the taste of the cheap filtration; Gaius assured him that it was clean, that he wouldn't get sick from it- either now or later on. He drank half of it down, wiped the little dribble off his chin, and looked around for the source of the eyes staring at him.

Merlin was in the chair in the corner, skinny limbs folded up into improbable angles, and a little tablet casting a soft blue glow up onto his face. "What's wrong?"

"I didn't say anything was wrong," Arthur said. "What, are you reading my thoughts now?"

"No, just a book. I keep telling you it's magic, not telepathy," Merlin said, a slow, sheepish smile spreading across his face.

"Right. Of course. What are you reading this time, then? You've always got your nose in one book or another." He plopped down on the couch and leaned back into the lumpy cushion's embrace.

Merlin flipped the tablet around to show off the page like Arthur could read the tiny text from six feet away. "Plato. The allegory of the cave."

"Sounds… interesting?"

"What, the university man didn't learn about Plato?" The shy smile appeared again.

"I, uh, must have missed that day," Arthur said, glad that the room's darkness hid the faint blush he felt rising in his cheeks.

"It's a thought experiment," Merlin said. "What if you confined some people in a cave so they could only see one wall. Then you shined a light in such away that only the shadows of what was going on outside the cave appeared on that wall. If you kept them there for their entire lives, they would be convinced that those shadows were the whole world. So what would happen to those people if you took them out of the cave where they could see reality? Would they think it was all a fantasy and want to return to captivity? I mean, the cave is a prison, but it's a known quantity. The world outside the cave is unknown. Frightening."

' _Sound like anyone you know?'_ Arthur bit the words back before they tumbled out. "Have you ever been outside London? Especially since…"

"Since Gaius took us out of the lab?" Merlin asked. Arthur nodded. "No. Can't afford to be spotted, you know. Even if the world does think we're dead. That's why I always have the respirator and glasses when we go somewhere." He tapped the display and the blue light went out, leaving the faint glow of clock displays and the dull yellow lamp on the table.

"There were times," Merlin said, "when we were fourteen or fifteen, and Freya and I would sneak out at night. Go to the British Museum or someplace like that to have a look. She could get us through security systems easily enough, and all we wanted to do was look around. There was this one time we went to Hyde Park. First time I'd really seen trees, you know? The sky was all purple and orange from city lights, and the trees were just dark streaks against it. We sat under this one tree until the sun came up. Shouldn't have done it, but we couldn't resist. We'd never seen a sunrise until then. And the buildings were all gold and shining, and the fog made them look like they were floating up in the clouds.

"We tried to imagine what it would be like, to live up there in the sky, but we just couldn't picture it. Too much time in the cave, I suppose." Merlin looked up at Arthur. "What was it like, living in the arcology?"

Arthur took a breath, trying to encapsulate his childhood in a sentence or two, but the words wouldn't come. "I- I'm not sure. It was all I ever knew. Bright lights, I suppose, and jets around the world. White walls are white walls, though, no matter where you are. I guess I never really paid attention. I was just always waiting for the next part of my life to happen."

He felt more than saw Merlin's gaze on him, curious and somehow non-judgmental, as though it was perfectly normal for someone with such privileges as he'd had to spend a lifetime ignoring them. They all had their own caves, whether they were high in the clouds, or tucked away in a forgotten corner deep underground

"There was this one time, though," Arthur said suddenly, pulling an image out of some dusty old vault in his memory, from that brief time between the military and Pendragon Corp. Merlin leaned forward, expectant. Anxious to hear a story about other lives and places far away. "There was this girl I was dating. Gwen. Big brown eyes, black hair, pretty as a picture. Anyway. I rented a cabin for us in Norway, up above the Arctic Circle. Parts of the ceilings are clear, you see, so you can just lie there and watch the Northern Lights."

"I get the feeling that wasn't the real reason you took her there."

"Maybe not." Arthur grinned at the memory. "But it was a clear night, and there was a point when we were there, all quiet, and up above there was light in the sky. Just a little glow- greenish and some blue- dancing up there for a few hours until we fell asleep. I'd never seen anything like it before."

Merlin's smile was sad and wistful, and Arthur wondered if he had ever really seen the sky except for that one morning in Hyde Park. "Did you see them again the next night?" he asked.

Arthur chuckled. That was how Merlin was, he'd learned. Always full of questions and curiosity. _'Tell me another story'._ It was the constant undercurrent in everything he asked. Not that Arthur could blame him. If he'd been cooped up in this place for half his life, he would want to hear everything about the outside world, too. "No. It was cloudy, and we left the next morning. We never went back."

"Think you ever will?"

"Not anymore, I don't think. Unless you're hiding an awfully big bank account somewhere."

"No. I've got a lot of things to hide, but a lot of money isn't one of them." The shy smile turned bright. "What about the girl. Gwen, yeah? Did you two stay together?"

"No." Arthur leaned forward, elbows on his thighs. "No, I got busy with...business. I didn't spend enough time with her, and she fell for someone else."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." Arthur twisted his lips into something resembling a smile. "It's probably for the best. It's not like she could have followed me down here."

"Yeah, I suppose you can't really woo a girl here if you're used to the top floor flat in an arcology." Merlin's gaze flicked over to the door, his thoughts probably wandering down the hall and into Freya's room.

"How's she doing?" Arthur asked softly.

A shrug, and a tightening of his jaw. "Some days are better than others. She sleeps a lot more than she used to. She just gets so tired." Merlin bit his lip and stared back down at the tablet, as though Plato might have all the answers.

He didn't ask the next question, ' _How long does she have?'_ Because Merlin didn't need to hear it, and Arthur already knew the answer: not long enough. He shifted topics. "Are you ready for this- whatever you want to call this insane plan we're getting ready for?"

"I think so. Yes? I dunno," Merlin said. "I mean, we've staged scenes before to develop certain scenarios and provoke reactions, but we've never faked someone's death before. At least, Freya and I haven't. Gwaine has. I think."

"You _think_?" Arthur did his best to keep his voice even. Merlin must have sensed the irate undertones anyway. He cringed away, arms folding in tighter against his chest. Arthur felt like he'd kicked a puppy. "Sorry. It's just, well. Being cooped up in here is… uncomfortable."

"Yeah, I know." The little smile returned, and Merlin relaxed, his shoulders dropping a centimeter or two.

"I suppose you would." Arthur tilted his head back against the back of the couch and rubbed his eyes. They felt gritty. He didn't know if it was the air or if he was just tired. Probably both. When he looked up again, Merlin was watching him, eyes dark and unfathomable in the soft light. "What?"

"When all this is done, what are you going to do?" There were notes in Merlin's tone Arthur couldn't quite sort out. Curiosity, certainly, but the rest he wasn't sure of.

"I hadn't really thought about it. Stay here? I don't think I'm really suited to work out there." He waved in the general direction of up and away. "And in a couple of days, the world will think I'm dead and buried, so it's not like I could just wander into a cafe and say, 'Hello, I'm dead. Think I could have a job?'"

Merlin gave him the laughter he was looking for. "Guess that's true. You'll have to pull your weight around here, you know. Learn a bit of wiring, maybe some plumbing. Definitely cleaning. You might even have to learn how to cook."

"Heaven forbid." Arthur winced. "I've never cooked before in my life. I'd probably poison the lot of you."

"I doubt that. It's mostly mixes and pre-made stuff. Not a lot of actual recipes" Merlin said. He unfolded some more, stretching one skinny leg out and then the other. "Probably have to see about clearing up that room at the end of the hall. Get some lights for it, something for you to sleep on. Three in one room is crowded enough. Four will just be too many."

"Hand me the broom and I'll get to work. I don't have anything else to do."

"It needs the electrics done first. Unless you can see in the dark," Merlin said. He took a breath to say something else, but Gaius's voice over the comm interrupted.

" _Merlin, can you come to the lab? I need your help with something."_

"I'll be right there." Merlin set his tablet aside, stood, and tugged the hem of his shirt down over the trousers clinging to narrow hips. "We'll start on that room later, yeah?"

"Of course."

* * *

It was well past midnight by the time Gwaine trudged home, a few bullets lighter and a few thousand credits richer. Enough to buy them all food for the next few weeks and keep Freya pain-free.

Nevermind the cost to his own conscience. Someday, maybe, he would have to reckon with that. But first he'd help his friends. He had nothing else to live for.

Home was as quiet as it should have been, the doors locked, alarms set, passwords in order. Calm and quiet and everything in enough order that he could let his heart settle back into its proper place, instead of being up in his throat like it was every time he came home after being gone for more than a day.

He locked up behind himself and wandered down the hall, checking out the rooms as he went. There was Gaius, snoring softly on his bed in the darkened lab; Freya slept peacefully in her little nest of tubes and blankets, resting without Merlin at her side for once. He was curled up in his own bed in the bunk under Will's, lips parted, breathing softly, and looking about ten years younger than he actually was.

"You're home late."

Gwaine turned, found Arthur standing a few steps away. "So I am."

"Where were you?"

"Out doing a job. Someone has to keep the cash flowing in, right?" Gwaine peeled off his coat, tossed it and the respirator on his bed. He wouldn't be sleeping for a while. There was too much adrenalin left in his system to allow for that. And he wanted a shower. He stepped out and latched the door. "Who are you, anyway? My mother?"

"I think I have a little too much stubble for that."

Gwaine couldn't help it. He snorted a laugh and whacked Arthur on the arm as he passed. "I had a job, I got paid, and now we can buy stuff. You know, like food. Do you like eating? I do."

The common room was dark when they entered. Gwaine flipped on one of the sun lamps, spending a few seconds just basking in the glow before pulling a protein bar out of his bag, followed by a little bottle of vodka, enough for a few shots. He held it up so it caught the light and gave it a shake. "Want some?"

Arthur shrugged. "Why not?"

They didn't have actual shot glasses, so Gwaine poured a bit into a couple of cups. The taste of the alcohol would clash with the plastic, but a person didn't drink vodka for the flavor. "Cheers," he said and tossed it back, closing his eyes against the burn as it flowed into his stomach.

"Bit strong, that," Arthur winced.

"Isn't that the point?"

"I guess."

Gwaine dropped into the squeaky chair, draped his leg over an arm, and bit into the protein bar. It was supposed to taste like chocolate and peanuts, but only managed sugary and chunky. He'd had real chocolate once, but it was so long ago that he hardly remembered what it was supposed to be like.

Arthur leaned against the table, arms crossed in front of his chest. He was still favoring his injured shoulder, but he was clear-eyed and upright. "Can I ask you something?"

"You can ask me anything. Can't promise I'll answer."

Arthur raised his eyebrows, shrugged. "Fair enough." A pensive looked appeared on his face, like he was pondering the question, searching for the exact words that would ensure Gwaine answered. "So I know how Merlin and Freya and Gaius ended up here, and I know about Will's mis-adventures. But what about you? You're not the idealistic revolutionary, trying to expose the corruption all around you. You're a mercenary. No offense."

"None taken." Gwaine raised the protein bar in a semblance of a toast, then took another bite of it, taking his time to chew thoroughly and ponder his answer. He sifted through his memory, bringing to mind a dark street, a gang of street toughs, and two skinny kids, surrounded but defiant. "I guess it started when Merlin and Will got roughed up by a pack of bullies. It wasn't them what started the fight, but they were ready to see it through. Stupid kids. They were outnumbered, three, four to one."

"What'd you do?"

"Wandered right into the middle of it, of course. They were outnumbered, and I guess I liked those sorts of odds. Managed to fight them off, too. Wasn't like those kids were any older or better at fighting than Will or Merlin, it's just that there were more of them. Didn't take long to send them packing, but I got a knife to the leg for my efforts." He rubbed his thigh where the scar was, remembering that pain. "Bleeds like a son of a bitch when you get stabbed there. I blacked out and woke up here the next day. That was a couple of years ago. Haven't left since."

"Why's that?"

A tight smile stretched Gwaine's lips, then faded. "I told you. I like the odds. Think about it. These three kids against the rest of the world, and they're pulling it off. Granted, they're awfully special, but…"

Things had changed at some point. He couldn't say exactly when, but there had been a flip, a change-up, and Gwaine had started to like the kids more than the odds. "Will's a bit of an ass sometimes, but Merlin and Freya, they're good people. Really, all three of them are, once you get used to the..." he waved his hand around like that would describe their ineffable qualities.

"The weirdness?" Arthur's eyebrows quirked upward, a wry smile pulling at his lips.

"Yeah." Freya was all sweetness and light, despite the fact that she was dying; Will could be a right prat, but his head was screwed on right; and Merlin, had been through hell- was still going through it- and he could still smile like he'd never seen a sign of darkness in the world. "They can almost make you believe that there is some good out there, and I want them to stay that way. You know, bright. As innocent as they can be for as long as possible."

Arthur didn't speak, just looked down at the floor, lost in thought. Eventually he nodded, a slight bob of the head to acknowledge what Gwaine had said, that he agreed, and maybe- hopefully- that he would do the same sorts of things Gwaine would to keep those kids innocent. Arthur finally looked up again, a laser-like stare directed at him. "You do wetwork, don't you?"

It was Gwaine's turn to look away. _Wetwork_. The term made it sound almost clean, like he spent his days washing windows up in the clouds instead of- only now and then, to be sure- stalking certain individuals in order to do them in. Wetwork. Assassinations. Murder for hire. "I might have," he said without looking the other man in the eye. It may as well have been a full confession.

"So what, then? You do what's necessary to keep them safe, keep their consciences clear?"

"What's necessary. Yeah, I do that. When I have to. I don't enjoy it, but one of them died because I couldn't pull a trigger…."

"You wouldn't be able to forgive yourself," Arthur said. "What about today?"

"Today?" Gwaine shrugged, trying to stay casual about the next part. "Got hired to put the fear of god into a Red Dragon dealer to keep him out of the neighborhood."

Arthur raised an eyebrow. "Did you put that fear into him, or did you put a couple of bullets into him?"

"Why can't we do both?" Gwaine let a rakish grin spread across his face, but it faded fast. "I just don't want that shit around here. Do you have any idea what it does to people?"

"Yeah, I know," Arthur said. "One of my classmates at University OD'ed on it. He was breathing when they found him, but he died the next day. Respiratory failure or brain damage. One or the other, maybe both. Hell of a way to go."

Gwaine nodded. He looked over his shoulder, unconsciously, glancing back in the direction of their bedroom, where Merlin slept.

Arthur didn't miss the motion, and he knew how to put minor clues together. "Is it your neighborhood you want to keep safe, or a certain few kids?"

"Why can't we do both?" Gwaine repeated himself.

"What happened?" Arthur asked. Gwaine shifted in his seat and moved to get up, to go away so he wouldn't have to say anything. "Look, I gave up everything to uncover what was going on in my father's company. You- or Freya, at least- have been through my entire history, spent a year tracing my every move. You all know pretty much everything there is to know about me. The same can't be said for me knowing about you. If you want me to help protect them, then I need to know what I'm protecting them from."

Gwaine leaned all the way back in the chair, far enough that it would fall over if he went much further. His eyes suddenly felt gritty, and he rubbed them, covering his face for a minute while he tried to figure out where to start. "So it's the magic, yeah?"

"What about it?"

"It's hurts him. Merlin. Whenever he uses his magic, it causes him pain," Gwaine said. "Gaius doesn't know what does it, but the only time it doesn't hurt him is when he's with Freya. Maybe something to do with endorphins or oxytocin or something. I don't know why. Gaius might be able to tell you." He spun the cup around and around in his hands, his gaze falling to the floor. "We didn't notice it happening at first. I mean, he and Freya would slip out at nights, before she got too sick to go out. Gaius couldn't stop them, just tell them to be careful. So he'd go out with Will, or by himself. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"But...?"

"Freya's health took a bad turn. Gaius was so focused on her, and she was too sick for Merlin to be with her. And asking him to stop doing his magic is like asking him to stop breathing." Gwaine stood up suddenly, knocking the chair over with a crash loud enough to wake half of London. He stalked to the sink and retrieved the bottle of vodka, pouring the last of it in his cup. He didn't drink it, though. Just stared down into it like his memories would somehow dissolve into the alcohol. "We didn't even notice. Should have. I mean, it's not like you don't see junkies all over the place when you go out. Not like you can't see the signs and symptoms or look them up on the matrix or anything."

Arthur leaned forward, his grasp on his cup turning into a white-knuckled one. "What happened?"

"Red Dragon. It's a tricky beast, you know. Just a touch, and you feel nice. Kind of floaty. Take a little more and you're off in la-la land, still feeling alright, everything's still okay. Problem is, you need more and more to feel good. Pretty soon, it's got its claws in you and won't let go. But if you're careful and you dose yourself just right, maybe no one around you will notice. And Merlin's been working around Gaius long enough that he was careful. He did it right, and none of us saw what was happening. And then he-" Gwaine's voice broke. He swallowed the vodka down in one go.

Arthur's eyes widened, realizing. "He overdosed." A statement, not a question.

Gwaine nodded, reveling in the distraction of the alcohol's burn and swiping at his eyes. He wasn't sure if the moisture was caused by the vodka or the memories. "Thank god he was here when it did for him. Will was trying to wake him up to do some chores, go fix something or somesuch. Couldn't rouse him, though. He was hardly breathing when we got him to the lab, and then his heart stopped…"

He'd never forget the blind panic when the monitors started buzzing a flatline, with Gaius moving faster than Gwaine had ever seen him move before, and Merlin lying there, so still and pale and too damned _young_ to be like that. But he had been, for seventy-three seconds until Gaius jammed enough stimulants into his chest to start that heart beating again. "A machine was breathing for him for the next day and a half, and the withdrawal? Well." Gwaine shook his head and let his hair fall around his face. "There's a reason I go after anyone selling that shit around here. I don't want it coming anywhere near him. Or anyone else."

"And that's why Gaius keeps the meds locked up."

"Yeah. We try to keep the temptation to a minimum. I mean, he could probably blast the locks if he wanted to, but the old man's disapproval works just as well. Not that Gaius.. disapproves, but…"

"I scared the hell out of you all, and it shows up as everything except fear, right?"

Both their heads snapped toward the door and the thin figure hunched there, arms folded tightly against his chest. "Because men like you don't like to show your fear. You don't want people to think less of you. I get it." Merlin slouched over to the counter and poured himself a cup of water. He kept his back to them.

"Merlin, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have-" Gwaine began.

"I pressed the issue," Arthur interrupted. "It's my fault. I had no idea what it would lead to."

Merlin shrugged. "I suppose you have a right to know what sort of people you're dealing with. We know all about you, you should know about us, right? Just wish you'd have let me do the telling." He held up the little vodka bottle- now empty- then tossed it in the recycler. "And you're not supposed to bring alcohol down here, you know." He stalked out without giving either of them a chance to speak again.

"Yeah, I know." Gwaine sighed and rubbed his eyes. "And now I'm twice the fool." He moved to get up and follow Merlin, to explain himself and make amends for the breach of his privacy, but Arthur put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

"I'll go. It was mostly my fault. Besides, you can only get so mad at the new guy, right?" Arthur gave him a crooked smile and disappeared out the door before he could object.

"If you say so, mate," Gwaine muttered. He flopped onto the couch and stared up at the ceiling, doing his best to convince himself that it was the vodka, not worry, that was tying his stomach up in knots.

* * *

It didn't take long for Arthur to find Merlin. There were only so many places a person could go in their little hideaway, and the kid wasn't even trying to be sneaky. He was sitting up in bed, his back pressed into the dark corner with his knees drawn up, a tablet propped up against them.

"What are you watching?" Arthur kept his voice low as he sat down on the edge of the bed. Will was asleep, and he didn't want to wake him.

Merlin shrugged. "Nothing. Just… my mum. On security footage. I know it's creepy, but it's the only way I can see her."

"Does she know where you are?"

"No. She thinks I'm dead."

"Because of the explosion Gaius had staged?"

"No," Merlin said. There was a wetness in his eyes, and he turned off the tablet. In the dim light, Arthur could hardly see him. "Before all that, when they took us to Pendragon Corp to begin with, they told them- my mum and Freya's parents- that we had died. Some sort of illness. We'd been in hospital for a few days each, you see. Me in Cardiff, and Freya here in London."

"Have you tried to contact them?"

Merlin shook his head. "It's too much of a risk. For them and for us. It's not really fair, either. Not like we can just waltz back into their lives and pretend nothing happened. They'd be arrested, sent to some dark prison somewhere. And even if they didn't go to jail, their lives would be ruined. If the government didn't watch their every move forever, Pendragon Corp. would. Or both. They've lost enough. And it was years ago. They've all moved on with their lives. It's best to just leave them in peace. No sense in dragging up ghosts, yeah?"

"I suppose," Arthur said. He moved further onto the bed and picked at the threadbare blanket. If everything went to plan and they managed to collect the reward for his head, he would have to remember to suggest that they buy new bedding for everyone. It wasn't always warm in here. "Look, about earlier, what Gwaine and I were talking about-"

" _Who_ you were talking about," Merlin said, his tone turning frosty.

Arthur winced. "Yeah. I'm sorry. I asked Gwaine what he'd been out doing today, and one thing led to another and the story came out. I didn't know where it was going to lead, but that doesn't excuse it."

Merlin blew a breath out through his nose and wrapped his arms around his knees. Arthur couldn't see him well enough to see his expression. He couldn't tell if the kid was angry or embarrassed or if he just wanted Arthur to go away so he could sleep.

So he waited.

"It burns," Merlin whispered at last.

"What?"

"The magic." Merlin said. "It burns. Feels like acid under my skin. And the stronger the spell I work, the worse it feels. But I can't _not_ use it. It's part of me, like my skin or blood. It's like air, all around me, and I feel it all the time. And it's like someone laced the air with sulfuric acid. The more I breathe in, the more it hurts. I have to breathe, though, and Red Dragon… it made the pain go away." He brushed at his eyes and sniffed. "God. I don't know why I'm telling you this."

"They say confession's good for the soul."

Merlin snorted, might have laughed, then fell silent. "I still can't believe I did it. Didn't make sense then. Makes even less now. Freya could have died, and I…"

There was a long silence between them, broken by the now-familiar deep thrumming from all around and Will's soft breathing from the bunk above them. "I don't think I'll ever be able to forgive myself," Merlin whispered.

Arthur looked down at his hands, wishing he could think of something to say, something that didn't sound like an idiotic platitude. "I don't think I can forgive myself, either. I was vice-president of my father's company, and I had no idea what he was doing. I've spent a good portion of my life reporting to a monster and I didn't have a clue. How's that for stupid?"

"It's not a competition."

"I know," Arthur said. "Just thought you might want to know that you're not the only one who's done something you can't forgive yourself for."

"That doesn't make me feel any better," Merlin said.

"I didn't think it would. But you're not alone," Arthur said. He reached over and tugged the tablet out of Merlin's loose grasp. "It's late. You should go back to bed. _I_ should go back to bed."

"Back to your couch, you mean?" A note of humor crept back into Merlin's voice.

Arthur glanced over his shoulder at the lumpy couch he'd been sleeping on the past few days. It was a far, far cry from the king size bed he had once had. But he was adjusting. Better the couch than the bed in Gaius's lab, where there was always some sort of bright light and Gaius's snoring to deal with. "Yeah, back to my couch."

"We'll get you a real bed one of these days. Assuming you stay after we 'kill' you." Merlin put the 'kill' in finger quotes.

"Where else would I go? Where else _can_ I go?"

"I'm sure we could figure something out," Merlin said. "Freya could sort something out for you."

"Yeah, she probably could, Robin Hood." Arthur ruffled Merlin's hair. "Now get to bed."

"Fine, fine. Good night, then." Merlin shooed him away and pulled his blankets up. He gestured at a switch and turned off the last light. "And Arthur?"

He turned back toward the younger man, though he couldn't see him in the dark. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

"You're welcome, Merlin."


	6. Chapter 6

"Are you ready for today?"

Merlin shrugged and brushed his thumb across Freya's cheek. "I guess. I'm not going to get any more ready than I already am. What about you?"

"I'm fine," she said. "What about you? You look nervous."

"Do I? I should work on my acting skills, then." He forced a laugh, and it sounded hollow to him. "I know we've done some crazy stuff in our time, but, I don't know. I just have a bad feeling about this."

"It'll be alright, young padawan. Just remember your training." Freya grinned and tapped him on the nose. Merlin couldn't help but smile. "I'll have a thousand eyes on you, Merlin. I'll be watching from everywhere. If there's a hint of trouble, I'll see it and warn you. Just like I always do."

"I know," he said, taking her hand and kissing her fingers. "You should get some rest before we go. It's going to be a long day."

* * *

The light cafe, Arthur noted, had not been selected for the quality of its menu. He poked at the noodles on his plate, trying to decide if they were moving because of the thin sauce they were drenched in or if, perhaps, the noodles were alive and trying to wiggle away. But at least this smelled like something you could call 'food'. That didn't make it anymore palatable. He gave the noodles a last poke for good measure and pushed the plate away.

He sighed. "For the record, I still think this is a lousy idea." Arthur scratched at the stubble on his jaw, brushing against one of the sensors on his throat. He hated the itch almost as much as he hated subvocalization- it was far too easy to forget the sensors were there, broadcasting your every muttered word to whoever was linked into to the short range network. There were enough stories out there about people making complete asses of themselves or worse, getting fired or even arrested. Arthur was determined not to be a statistic.

" _It's too bad no one's recording this, then,"_ Merlin's voice was loud in his earpiece. He was somewhere nearby, though Arthur couldn't see where exactly, and the crowd in the light cafe wasn't helping.

" _I don't recall you having any better ideas,"_ was Freya's arch response. _"Beggars can't be choosers, Arthur. Your father won't stop until you're in his custody or dead. So barring us giving you up-"_

" _Which we're not going to do,_ " Merlin interjected.

" _Right. We're going to just have to fake it,"_ Freya finished. _"And quit messing with the sensors. Every time you hit one of them, it sounds like something blew up in my ear."_

"I'll keep that in mind," Arthur said, then bit his tongue to keep himself from saying something ill-advised. "It would help if I weren't waiting around for Gwaine to shoot me in the head."

" _That's the part I'll be recording,"_ Will piped up. Arthur tried not to jump. He'd almost forgotten the hacker was there, too, blending into the light cafe like he was just another lower level denizen stopping in for a dose of artificial sunlight and clean air. There were hundreds of these places spread out across London, both above and below ground. Arthur hadn't been in one since his Uni days, when he and a group of his wealthy friends had ventured down to street level to see what sorts of bent pleasures they could find in the lightless caverns under the city.

Whatever Garden of Earthly Delights the others had been expecting, they hadn't found it. The establishment Kay had picked at random might have been called dingy on an optimistic day and reeked of unwashed clothes, desperation, and a whole lot of bad sex.

This cafe was better than that. The floor had been swept sometime in the past year, the air didn't smell like it had been filtered during the late Victorian era, and the sun lamps worked. He might even get a tan if he stayed long enough. "How long is this going to take?"

" _As long as it takes,"_ Freya said. _"I thought they would've pinged your location by now. It's not like you're trying to hide."_

No, he was just doing the sort of stupid thing that any desperate idiot and/or drug addled moron would do- try to be inconspicuous and fail miserably at it. Merlin was the one who was all geared up and unrecognizable, swathed behind layers of clothes, a respirator, and dark ER glasses. Just like any dangerous bloke in the underworld would be, though Arthur wasn't sure how well Merlin fit the "dangerous" part of that description. He was occasionally clumsy, approaching brilliant when it came to gadgets and random trivia, and outright adorable whenever he was sprawled out on his bed and asleep. That was a rarity, though. Merlin ended up curled around Freya most nights, like he was building up a repository of sense-memories to tide him through the days and years when she would be gone, and he would still be around.

Someone brushed past him. Arthur fought the instinct to grab their arm and throw them to the ground before they could put a gun to his head. It turned out to be some blonde woman wearing too much makeup and a smile that flashed brightly and vanished as she walked away. He forced himself to relax. "Brilliant. We're just waiting for someone to walk up and shoot me, then," Arthur mumbled. "Are the cameras even looking at me?"

" _Yes,_ " Freya hissed. _"That's how I'm watching you. Now quit complaining and pay attention. The first notice just went up. I'm sending it on to Gwaine, but there are others out there looking, too."_

"And you're sure no one's listening in on this link?"

" _I'm sure of it. Now shut it. I'm working."_

Arthur decided to err on the side of caution. His brief military career had taught him enough about the benefits of letting people do their jobs, even if he did want an update every half second. _He_ was the sitting duck, after all, and they were the ones just blending in with the scenery.

" _There,"_ Freya said after a minute or two. _"The word's out. Give it another five minutes or so, and Gwaine can move in."_

" _What about Pendragon Corps agents?"_ Merlin asked. _"How are we going to spot them?"_

" _I've got Gwaine and about half a dozen of them tagged from the last time I was in the Pendragon systems. There's at least one other nearby,"_ Freya said. She was quiet again for a moment. Probably pulling up and scanning the agent's entire life story, down to their favorite kind of ice cream. _"There's. Collins is her name. A slippery creature, from her file. Looks like she's good at disguises, so she might look like anyone."_

"Well isn't that the best news I've heard all day?" Arthur said. He fidgeted with the pint glass in front of him, wishing he could down the other half or have a little dose of some sort of sedative. He was already awash with adrenalin, his reflexes primed to move, run, fight, or whatever else might be a good idea under the circumstances. "How far away is Gwaine?"

" _I'm three blocks away, Sunshine,"_ Gwaine's voice finally came over the commlink. _"Don't get your knickers in a knot."_

"You're not the one waiting around to get zapped by your father's hired assassins."

" _And you're the only one complaining about this whole thing,"_ Freya said. _"Get a move on, Gwaine. Collins is catching up to you."_

" _Well, we can't have that, now can we?"_ Gwaine's tone was smug. Enough so that Arthur wanted to punch him in the face. He wanted to tell at them all that they were taking this operation far too lightly, that their plans were so thin a housefly could buzz right through them, that the back-up plan of 'we'll wing it if we need to' was not a plan at all, and that they were being far too cavalier with his life.

But he kept his mouth shut and bit his tongue to keep his displeasure from being picked up on the subvocal level. This wasn't his world, and he didn't know the rules down here. He wasn't even sure he knew all the jargon yet. But he wasn't alone down here. Merlin and Will were there, and Freya wouldn't risk Merlin's life if she wasn't sure about how the chips were going to fall.

He glanced up at the chronometer on the wall. How long did it take to walk three blocks through late-night foot traffic?

A hand closed around his wrist. A rough, feminine voice whispered something in his ear, and suddenly he couldn't move. He just sat there while she sagged into the chair across from him, her jagged fingernails digging into his coat sleeve. The polish was black and chipped. Under her hood, she had the gaunt face and dilated pupils of a Velocity addict, and she was shaking. Whether she was high or in withdrawal, Arthur couldn't tell.

"Who are you?" he asked. _Tried_ to ask. The words got caught behind his teeth, but his mouth had formed the words so the question went out to the group regardless.

' _The fuck?' 'Who is that?' 'You alright?'_ All the questions came at once, and he couldn't answer a single one.

"'s your fault," the woman slurred. Her pupils were so wide that the blue irises were just a thin rim around them. "All of you. You poisoned th' well. Should kill you now, Arthur Pendragon. You 'n your father 'n your sister. All of you. And ev'ryone at the top. It'd serve you right. It's killing us, 'n you haven't even noticed." Her fingers tightened on his wrist with every rambling word. She would have drawn blood right now if his sleeve wasn't so thick.

' _Now would be a good time, Gwaine. I don't know who she is or how she's doing what she's doing."_ Arthur formed the words carefully, suddenly glad for the subvocal sensors he'd been cursing just a few minutes ago. He couldn't even move his fingers.

" _I'm running facial detection protocols,"_ Freya said anxiously. _"Nothing's come up so far. She's not one of your father's people, that's for sure."_

" _The death threat clued me into that,"_ Arthur voiced. _"And she did something to me. I can't move."_

" _She drugged you?"_

" _No, she said something."_

" _She has magic?!"_ That from Merlin, whose head snapped around to look at them.

" _Maybe?"_

The woman's ramblings had devolved into incoherent mumbling, the most prominent word being 'kill'. Disturbingly. She stared up at him again, and the thin rim of blue in her eyes melted into a golden glow. Just like Merlin's had, when he'd summoned the light in the tunnel.

" _Make that a yes."_

The feverish look on the woman's face did not bode well for Arthur's continued existence. Her hand tightened on his wrist, vice-like and unyielding. Her mutterings had turned to words in a language he didn't recognize, a low chant with undertones that were nothing like Merlin's spells.

The air grew hot around him. Just him. No one else noticed. Was she going to set him on fire? Watch him burn from a meter away, grinning madly while he caught fire, still magically paralyzed and unable even to scream?

" _Help me…"_

Arthur wasn't sure if the plea was just a thought in his head, or if he'd voiced it so the others could hear. None of the other patrons noticed anything wrong.

The would soon enough. His skin felt like it was about to catch fire.

Merlin moved, flinging one hand out, palm out and fingers spread. He shouted something. Arthur thought there was a flash of gold behind Merlin's glasses, but whatever he might have seen was replaced with a blinding flash between himself and the woman. She screamed and fell back, collapsing to the floor in a heap of ragged clothing and brittle brown hair.

And suddenly he could move again, could breathe normally. The air felt icy compared to the heat that had been building. He jolted to his feet, caught a foot in the leg of his chair and staggered sideways, landing hard on his knees.

The commotion hadn't gone unnoticed by the cafe's patrons. The smarter ones were rushing toward the exit while others, either too stupid to flee or too caught up in the action for their own good stayed behind. There were more than a few devices held up to record the events. Those videos were what they'd come here for, but could help but curse them out under his breath. Damned people were like pigeons with no sense of danger, just flapping around a fight like it was another day at the park.

Arthur shoved the chair away and started to push to his feet. Then he stopped.

Someone had a gun to his head.

* * *

There were a lot of things Merlin didn't encounter very often in his underground existence. Sunlight, for one, and high quality food for another. New people. People of any kind, really

And magic. Magic was the sort of thing he had thought was unique to him and to Freya, and her powers had faded years ago thanks to the bioware filling her body like a cancer. He had hoped he wasn't entirely alone in his abilities, and that there were other magic users in the world. There had to be.

He just hadn't expected to find one here, in a dingy light cafe, threatening his friends.

His own reaction had been a surprise, too. Through all their misadventures under London, he had never used his magic to attack someone like that. He'd surprised people with it, and misdirected them, but his intention had been to bewilder or annoy.

But in that instant between feeling her spell build and his reaction, he couldn't recall what his intentions had been. Had he meant to distract her, or to kill her?

Regardless of his intent she was lying on the floor, convulsing, her eyes wide and fixed on the empty air in front of her. And was that smoke rising from her coat?

Hands grabbed his shoulders and spun him about. A voice in his ears yelled at him to ' _get moving already, dammit!'_

So he moved, letting the hands guide him toward the rear exit, even as he cranked his head around to look back at the woman.

For a moment, their gazes connected and they almost- _almost-_ understood each other. Then she twitched one final time and went still.

Merlin heard a rushing sound in his ears. Hands shoved him out the door and into the darkness beyond.

* * *

Arthur was only slightly relieved to find out that it was Gwaine holding the gun to his head. They were arranged in a rather theatrical pose, with Arthur on one knee and Gwaine standing over him. In any other situation, Arthur would have juked around and shoved the gun away, maybe grabbed Gwaine's arm to pull himself up and punch the mercenary in the face. But this wasn't that sort of situation, and so Arthur stayed down.

"Put your hands on your head, Pendragon. Nice and slow," Gwaine said. "And no sudden moves. I'd hate to have to splatter your brains all over those nice girls over here." Arthur glanced up involuntarily toward the women. They'd pressed themselves against the wall of their little booth and were staring at them with wide eyes. A light on their ER glasses told him the devices were recording.

' _They wanted a show,'_ Arthur thought. ' _And that's what they're getting.'_

He raised his hands and laced his fingers behind his head. Gwaine grabbed the back of his coat and hauled him to his feet. "Out the back way, nice and steady-like, alright? Any funny moves and I'll shoot you right here. Wouldn't cost _that_ much to pay for the cleanup."

"Laying it on a bit thick, aren't you?" Arthur said under his breath.

"That's part of the game, isn't it?" Gwaine replied as he shoved Arthur through the door and into the darkness beyond. "Now get moving. Freya says there's another agent on his way. A freelancer I don't want to have to deal with."

The passageway was a narrow walkway between two buildings with a spot of light from the street at one end and a dead end on the other, with a grate-covered drain just under the walled off end. They knew from digitally scouting the place out earlier that there were no working cameras, and even if there were, it was too dark for them at this time of night. A window of cracked and frosted glass gave off the only light, just enough light for Arthur to see Merlin leaning against the wall and Will standing beside him. Maybe it was because the light was pale and greenish, but Merlin looked like hell.

"I thought you were going to get that grating out of the way so we could get out of here!" Gwaine hissed.

"We've been out here for a whole ten seconds," Will growled. "And Merlin was thisclose to passing out. Did you really want me to let him fall face first in the gutter? Yeah, I didn't think so. How about you two get to work on that instead of bitching at me, okay?"

Gwaine shook his head and shoved Arthur toward the dead end before holstering his weapon and kneeling down to help.

Freya's warning was half a second too late.

" _Merlin, behind you!"_

The gunshot was deafening in the narrow space. Arthur felt something sharp brush against his face and he jerked back and dropped the grating.

"Who is that?" Gwaine shouted at no one in particular.

" _Myror!"_ Came Freya's response. _"He's freelancing. I can't help you at all! I can't see, except through your glasses!"_

"Then hush it and let us do our jobs!" Gwaine barked.

There was another burst of gunfire. Arthur dropped to the ground as Gwaine stepped forward to fire back. He couldn't see if Will and Merlin were still on their feet or not.

The light went out in the window, and suddenly the only illumination came from flashes of muzzle flash as Gwaine and Myror exchanged shots here and there. Damnably irritating, since Arthur was there without the benefit of the enhanced reality glasses that would have given him night vision. The others had their glasses, so at least they could see.

But Arthur was a sitting duck.

" _Leoht."_ Merlin's voice came through his earbuds- ' _thank god'-_ and brilliant blue light lit up the passage.

"Shit!" Gwaine winced away from the light. "Warn a guy next time, would you?" His eyes must have adjusted quickly, though, because barely a second passed before he fired again.

There was more weapons fire, though it was a different sound. Higher and quieter- modern stunner rounds instead of the near-antique firearm Gwaine held. Arthur pushed himself up to a knee to look back and see if it was Will or Myror doing the shooting.

It was Will. He'd shoved Merlin back and was firing frantically, actions that spoke of just enough practice to keep from shooting himself in the foot, but not enough to maintain the control of breath and aim that would put an enemy down, unless chance was working in his favor.

And of course, chance was _not_ in their favor.

Myror had ducked into a doorway Arthur hadn't seen in the darkness, popping out every few seconds to fire off a round or two, the antique handgun in one hand and the newer weapon in the other. Impossible to tell which was which, and Arthur didn't want to find out first hand. Damn it all, Myror had to run out of ammo some time.

So did Gwaine, and he ran out first.

Arthur took the opportunity to scrabble over to Gwaine to grab his second handgun, while Myror took aim and fired.

"Will!" Merlin scream echoed through the passage and in Arthur's earbuds. He looked up in time to see Will fall, twitching as he hit the pavement.

"NO!" Hard to say if Gwaine shouted that, or Arthur, or if it was both of them together. They both lunged forward, but Myror was closer to Merlin than either of them.

It took half a breath for Arthur to grab Gwaine's back-up pistol and for Gwaine to finish reloading.

It took the same amount of time for Myror to reach Merlin, grab him by the throat, and put a gun to his head.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Apologies for the lateness of this update. I ran into a super busy couple of weeks, then topped it off by getting sick. But the busy-ness is done with, and I am on the mend. Thank you for your patience!_

* * *

Under normal circumstances fifteen feet was a small distance. Crossable in a few seconds and close enough to have a conversation, it wasn't far on most scales. Right now, it was the greatest distance Arthur could imagine.

There was a gun in his hands. He didn't remember drawing it, didn't know what was in it, if it held stunners or sleepers or something deadlier. Gwaine was at his side, and they had solid brick walls at their backs.

Fifteen feet in front of them, Will lay still with his head turned away from them, his bulky clothes not giving any hint if was breathing.

And Myror had a dark and deadly gun pressed to Merlin's head, and Arthur wasn't marksman enough to shoot the assassin and free the kid without risking Merlin's life.

"This is an interesting turn of events." Myror's smile flashed in the gloom. "Here I thought I was going to poach a head from a fellow hunter, and I find that the quarry's joined the pack. It's not the strangest thing I've ever seen, but I have to admit that it piques my interest." He shifted his grip on Merlin, his fingers digging into the soft skin under Merlin's chin. The kid's glasses were still on, so Arthur couldn't see his eyes, but he could _feel_ Merlin's gaze burning into him.

"What was your plan, then?" Myror went on, "To fake your death and claim the reward money? Hardly the most original of ideas, but I have to applaud the effort. Did you think of it yourself? No? Pity."

"Drop it, Myror," Gwaine rumbled. "You're outnumbered, and if those aren't sirens I hear down the way, then I don't know anything at all."

"You don't want those sirens coming here anymore than I do," Myror said. "And it doesn't matter that there are two of you and one of me, seeing as how you'll have to shoot through your friend to get to me." His hand twitched around Merlin's throat, and the kid made a noise like a wounded animal.

"Stop!" Arthur spoke without thinking. "Stop. I'll go with you, just let him go. He's barely a part of this." He let the gun fall to the ground and spread his hands wide in front of himself, taking a step forward and another to the side to move in front of Gwaine.

Myror chuckled. "How noble you are. Not at all like your father, are you? Now there's a cold fish if I ever saw one. No, no. Stay there. I'm not convinced of your sincerity quite yet."

"What do you want, then?" Arthur asked. He looked Merlin up and down, noticed the kid's arms were going limp at his sides. Had the assassin cut off his air supply? Was he about to pass out?

" _You're in my line of sight, idiot,"_ Gwaine's voice came through the commlink. It would have been a growl if such things could come through subvocally. _"The hell do you think you're doing?"_

" _Making it up as I go along,"_ Arthur sent back. "Let's make this an even trade, shall we? You let him go, and I'll come with you. No fuss, no muss, yeah?"

"Have you find yourself a boyfriend since you went below?" Myror grinned again. "That didn't take long, did it? Is he pretty? It's hard to tell with the mask on. He must be, though. Can't imagine you taking a shine to an ugly boy. Maybe I'll take him with us. There's a good market for pretty faces if you know the right people."

" _Arthur, get out of my way,"_ Gwaine said. _"The bastard'll shoot us both and try to sell Merlin to some flesh peddler, and I will be damned if I let that happen."_

" _Stay calm, Gwaine. That's not going to happen,"_ Arthur sent. Would Myror really try to take Merlin and sell him to the highest bidder? Maybe. Or maybe Merlin would kill Myror before the assassin had a chance to make good on his threat.

No need to let things get that far, though.

"You're not going to take him, Myror," Arthur said, daring to take a small step forward. "You're just going to take me, alright? One for one. Trust me, you don't want to have to deal with him. He's impertinent, mouthy, and a right pain in the ass. He's not worth the trouble. Really." Another step, another slow breath to keep himself steady, keep his hands from shaking.

" _Merlin…"_ Freya's voice was soft, barely a whisper in his ear. _"Don't…"_

" _I'm not going to put him in danger,"_ Arthur promised her. He took another step. Just another ten feet, and then… what? He'd admitted to Gwaine that he didn't have a plan, and he hadn't come up with one in the past minute. Did he really think Myror was going to let go of Merlin before taking Arthur to his doom? Or that he'd get the chance to take Myror down before the assassin shot either him or Merlin?

He racked his brain, searching for solutions as his foot touched pavement again, but his ideas were as bright as the passageway.

" _Arthur, get out of my way,"_ Gwaine said again. There was an edge there like he was getting ready to tackle Arthur and unload the rest of his clip into Myror. Never mind that his chances of killing Myror without hitting Merlin were slim to snowball's-chance-in-hell.

" _Trust me,"_ Arthur sent back. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck start to rise and an uneasy energy started building in his chest.

Two things happened. First, Merlin's magelight went out, plunging the passage into blackness. Then there was a flash and a crackle of electricity. Myror cried out.

And it was quiet. For three heartbeats Arthur froze, just listening, trying to sort out what had happened.

The light came back on, its blue brilliance casting harsh shadows all around before dimming down to a bearable level. Arthur blinked, took a breath.

Myror lay groaning on the pavement, his clothes smoking, hand shaking as he felt around to reclaim his weapon or figure out which way was up. Merlin was hardly upright, slouching over his knees and propping himself up with one hand and rubbing his head with the other.

Gwaine shoved past Arthur to get to Myror. He let the merc go and knelt by Merlin. "What'd you do?"

"I used the Force, Luke," Merlin muttered. "Electricity, you know? Like a static shock. Probably shorted out his wearable tech. Not that I'm going to cry about it. Felt like the bastard was trying to rip my head off." He shifted away from Arthur and started coughing.

There was a clatter and a thud. Arthur looked up and found Gwaine grinning back at him, a feral smile that probably didn't reach his eyes. Myror had gone still. Blood dripped from his nose. "Sorry about that. He was going for a gun. Or maybe a knife. I'm not real sure, and I didn't want to give him the time to actually get it."

"Right." Whether it was a lie or not, Arthur didn't care. Part of him wanted to beat the assassin senseless, too, for hurting Merlin and-

"Will!" Merlin pulled his respirator off as he tried to scrabble past Arthur in a tangle of arms and legs that didn't quite respond the way they should have, and his attempts to help the kid were brushed off with a frenetic burst of energy that sent them both sprawling.

Arthur found his feet first, hauling Merlin back up by the back of his coat and holding on until the kid was steady enough to at least walk straightish. But Merlin chose not to walk, lurching forward instead and bouncing off Gwaine until he dropped to his knees at Will's side, the subvocal sensors picking up his ' _pleasepleaseplease'_ as he touched Will's shoulder.

"Will?"

"Bugger me," was Will's answering groan as Merlin rolled him onto his back and tugged the glasses off his face. "Turn off the light, would ya?"

"You're alive!" Merlin blurted, half-giggling as his face lit up with relief. But he didn't let the little magic light go out.

"I think so. Fuck, I hate stunners." Will squeezed his eyes shut and pressed a shaking hand to his face.

"At least it wasn't a real bullet," Arthur said as he knelt beside the kids, "or you'd really be dead." He touched his fingers to Will's throat, taking his pulse and otherwise checking to make sure that the stunner round hadn't done anything more than knock him off his feet and out of commission for a few minutes. But other than the dizziness and the raging headache he'd have for the next few hours, Will seemed fine.

"Is he gonna make it?" Gwaine called out.

"Yeah," Arthur said. "He just needs a few minutes."

"Don't have that, sad to say," Gwaine said. "We need to get moving five minutes ago. Freya's distracted the police for now, but it won't take long for them to find the right cafe and then us back here."

Arthur looked down at WIll and got an arm under his shoulders to help the kid up. "Think you can finish recovering elsewhere?"

"I'll give it a go and try not to throw up on your shoes," Will said. He let Arthur and Merlin pull him to his feet and took a few hesitant steps forward. "And you," he shoved a wavering finger in Merlin's face, "don't even think about it."

Merlin opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of whatever he'd been about to say. "Fine. I'll just let you fall on your face down there. Don't ever say I never tried to help you."

Magic. It must have been about the magic.

"We don't need to both be falling down," Will said. His voice was getting clearer, his posture straightening. "I've had worse than a stunner. I'll be fine. Don't you worry about me."

"Yeah, whatever," Merlin said. But he didn't let Will help while he and Arthur pulled the grate off the drain. The damned thing was more slippery than heavy, and between the two of them they pulled it far enough aside that they could slip through one at a time. "You coming, Gwaine?"

Gwaine hadn't moved from his vigil over Myror. "You go on. I need to take care of him, make sure his tech wasn't watching us."

Merlin paused, took a breath, then shrugged and dropped into the shallow tunnel behind Will.

Arthur waited until they'd passed out of his line of sight. "'Take care of him'?"

"Yeah," Gwaine said, "I'm going to patch him up nice and neat so he can go tiptoe through the tulips in Hyde Park. What do you think I'm gonna do, Pendragon? Or do you want him coming after us so he can finish what he started?"

A wave of nausea washed through Arthur, but he swallowed it back. Unpleasant as his actions might be, Gwaine did what he thought he had to do to protect his family and there was nothing Arthur could do to stop him.

"Do what you have to do," Arthur said and turned away to let Gwaine do his work.

* * *

Gwaine took a deep breath and checked his weapons. His hands weren't shaking. It should have concerned him that they weren't, because jittery nerves were a sure sign that he had qualms about what he was about to do.

But he didn't have any qualms, and so his hands weren't shaking. For Gwaine to protect his family, Myror had to die. He knew too much, and the threats he'd made aside from that…

No man threatened to sell his friends to a flesh peddler and failed to pay for it.

Gwaine pulled all the tech off Myror he could find and crushed it under his boot, grabbing the memory cells so no one could reconstruct whatever recordings the assassin had made. The guns, he collected for the future once he decided they didn't have any built in trackers. He turned his commlinks off after that.

"Right," Gwaine said, though Myror was still unconscious and couldn't hear him. "Sorry to do this to you, friend. It's nothing personal, you see. Just business. Those friends of mine you threatened, they're doing good for the world. But blokes like you and me, well, we deserve the bullets that are coming to us."

He took careful aim and fired twice, then turned on a heel a disappeared into the tunnel.


	8. Chapter 8

Will recovered from the stunner round faster than Merlin recovered from the spells he'd cast, and while neither was happy with his lot in life, both were upright and walking on their own by the time Gwaine caught up to the little group. Merlin tapped Will on the arm to signal a stop. He didn't need to tell Arthur to stop. He had been following along in a stormy silence, and Merlin had a feeling that that particular tempest would break soon enough, preferably at home where a screaming match would go unnoticed by any other- and probably less savory- denizens of the tunnels of London Below.

"You alright?" There was concern in Gwaine's eyes above the cheery smile the merc had pasted on his face. And the shadow of something Merlin couldn't puzzle out in the tunnel's gloom.

"Yeah, I'll survive. What about you?" Merlin asked.

"Right as rain. You can't get rid of me that easily," Gwaine answered. His false smile widened, then fell away. He raked his hair back and jammed the ER glasses back on his face, then tugged Merlin's hood back up. "Get your glasses back on. It's just going to get darker from here."

Merlin shivered, not sure if Gwaine just meant that there wouldn't be any lights in the lower tunnels, or if their plans were blacker than before. Probably just about lights, but… Things hadn't exactly gone according to plan back there.

And the woman. Who was she, and what had she meant when she told Arthur, ' _you've poisoned the well'_? Had he killed her?

Nausea washed through him at the thought, and he almost stumbled.

"You okay?" Will asked softly.

He gave him a jittery nod. "Yeah. It's just… Yeah. I'm fine."

"Everything alright?" Arthur finally broke his silence.

"Oh, for the love," Merlin sighed, exasperated by all the attention. "Will was worse off than I am. I'm fine. Just peachy. Okay?" He shrugged his backpack off, tugged a pair of ER glasses out of a side pocket, and shoved them into Arthur's hands. "Put these on. We're going into the lower tunnels, and you won't be able to see without them. No lights on down there."

Arthur opened his mouth like he was about to say something, thought better of it, and put the glasses on. "And where exactly are we going?"

"Down to the lowest tunnels,". Merlin said. "They're the oldest ones, been around since Roman times, you know? No one's down there, there's no electricity, no matrix, no nothing like that. Won't be any way, really, for Pendragon Corp to trace the vidfile, since we won't have a connection to anyone but Freya."

"Won't that look suspicious to the tech people who are going to be poring over all this?" Arthur asked.

"No," Gwaine said. "It's pretty standard for this stuff. They'll have looked at the vidfiles from the cafe, see that I took you out of if at gunpoint, and once they have the recording of your 'execution'," he put air quotes around the word with his fingers, "and your locator chip in hand, they'll assume that events took their natural course and that you're dead."

"You hope," Arthur said darkly. He sighed, but if there was anything he wanted to add but didn't, Merlin couldn't tell.

"Quit your yammering," Will said, smacking Gwaine on the arm to get his attention. "Our doorway's up here somewhere, you know."

"Yeah, yeah," Gwaine muttered. "Don't want to miss it."

The door was an ancient thing, its hinges rusted to the point where they should have crumbled away when they pulled the door open, but they were thick enough that it held, their creaks and groans hidden by a simple masking spell Merlin had to hold for all of forty-five seconds before they were all through and had the door shut again. He pulled his gloves off and massaged his fingers as he followed along, content to let Gwaine lead the way, with Will in front of him and Arthur at his back as they descended an iron staircase built sometime in the Victorian era, when the Underground was a fabulous experiment in both how efficient and miserable public transit could be.

These tunnels, though, were just one layer among many, creating a vast network under London than even the longest-lived underground citizens had explored. Their destination was well below this, farther down than Merlin had ever gone. Farther than he had ever wanted to go.

Merlin had read that long, long ago during the Roman times, an ancient queen had rebelled against their southern conquerors, wiped out a legion of their troops, and nearly succeeded in driving the Romans out of Britain altogether. It was said that she had burned the young city of London to the ground. The tunnels the four of them were descending to might have dated from that time period. Merlin wasn't sure, but the place _felt_ old enough for it, and it held that particular quietness that only ancient things held, a surety of itself and its place in the world that new places didn't have.

That didn't mean he wanted to be there, but it wasn't as unnerving as some places he had been in. Gwaine had picked it because it was so far away from everything. Lacking light and a real connection to the world, no one had bothered to build a community down there. It also meant that the sound of a pair of gunshots wouldn't be heard and draw some curious onlooker. The place was also so far off the map, that if this particular one could be identified from the flooring inside the circle of light, then they'd have more problems than Merlin knew how to deal with.

Not that he knew how to deal with the ones they already had, but wasn't it nice to know there might be more out there?

Maybe someday, he'd stop coming up with all sorts of horrific, imaginary scenarios of gloom and doom. He doubted it, though. It seemed as likely that he'd end up living in a castle somewhere where there was sunlight and clean air.

"Are you even paying attention?"

Merlin snapped his mouth shut before he could give a stupid answer because Gwaine wasn't talking to him, and if Merlin said something, they would have to start this whole process over again. There was something in Arthur's expression that told Merlin he was losing patience with this whole affair.

Granted, if Merlin himself were the one on his knees, hands bound in front of him, with Gwaine pointing a gun at his heart, he thought he might be losing patience, too. He blinked and focused on the task at hand. His part was coming up soon.

"So why don't you just get this over with?" Arthur sneered at Gwaine. "Or are you too scared of a man on his knees?"

"Doesn't really matter what I feel, does it? I'm the man with the plan and the gun," Gwaine said. It sounded like he was smiling under the respirator. "I need voice recognition to claim my reward, so go ahead and say your name for the nice camera and we can get on with our evening."

Arthur closed his eyes, took in a long breath and let it out just as slowly. A bitter smile flashed across his face and turned to a wince when it pulled a seeping cut on his cheek. He had let Gwaine punch him in the face for the effect. To make it look like he hadn't gone without a fight. Now he looked like he was preparing to die. He opened his eyes and looked up at Will. "Fine, then," he said between gritted teeth. "My name is Arthur Pendragon. I am- was- the Vice President of Pendragon Corp, but was forced out of my position for revealing the corrupt nature of my family's business. I can only hope my sacrifice hasn't been in vain."

"Thank you," Gwaine said. "That was a lovely speech." His finger tightened on the trigger. He fired twice.

Arthur crumpled without a sound. A red stain started to spread across his coat from the vials of previously donated blood.

Merlin hoped that was all it was, anyway.

It was silent for a long moment, then Will nodded sharply. "Okay. I've got what I need. I'll start compiling everything in a minute. It's your turn, Merlin."

"Right." Merlin started, then hurried to kneel at Arthur's side. He undid the bindings, then checked his pulse. Slow and steady. The sleeper rounds would keep him out for a couple of hours, or until Merlin gave him the stim patch that would wake him up. Before that, though, they needed the locator chip in Arthur's arm. "Just give me a few minutes," Merlin said as he pulled on a pair of surgical gloves and doused Arthur's arm with anaesthetic and antiseptic. "Are you done, Freya?"

" _Of course I am,"_ she said brightly. _"The chip recorded thirty seconds of flatline before I shut it down, just the way it would if he were actually dead."_

"You're sure about that?" Merlin asked.

" _Absolutely. I've been linked into the damned thing for over a year. I think I know Arthur better than I know you now,"_ Freya said. _"But don't worry. I still like you more."_

Gwaine laughed and Merlin rolled his eyes. "Good to know," he said, then turned his focus onto his task.

As far as bioware went, locator chips were relatively unsophisticated. Just a centimeter long, they were attached to the radial bone above the wrist's nerve cluster and recorded whatever biological data associated with whoever it was embedded in, along with their GPS coordinates. Simple stuff. But they were, by design, a bitch to remove. Especially when Merlin was performing glorified field surgery in a dark tunnel below London.

Arthur was going to be in a wretched, pain-fogged mood when he woke up. But if the rest of this went to plan, the world would think he was dead, and no one would come looking for him.

"How much longer?" Gwaine asked.

Merlin jumped, winching when his scalpel scraped bone. "A few more minutes, if you give me space to work, Gwaine. Now fuck off. I need to focus here." It wouldn't do to leave a bit of circuitry inside Arthur's arm that Gaius would have to remove later on. It'd just be another way to disappoint the old man. He shoved that thought aside. There were only a few millimeters left, plus the filaments dipping into the nerve cluster. A few more quick motions with the scalpel and an oh-so gentle tug, and the whole thing came free, a mess of silvery metal dripping blood onto Merlin's hands until he set it in the little case. "Okay. It's ready."

"You all done, Will?" Gwaine asked.

"Yeah. Waiting on you." Will pulled a data chip from the port in his head and handed it over. "The editing's as clean as I'm going to get it. As long as Arthur keeps his head down from here on out, we're golden."

"Great. We've got to trust Captain Sunshine here to not be himself, then. Fantastic." Gwaine shook his head and tucked the case and data chip in a pocket. "I adore our chances for the future."

"Just take it and go, Gwaine," Merlin sighed. "Take it to Pendragon Corp, drop it off, get paid, and try not to do something completely stupid." He stretched his fingers and prepared for the next part- the healing magic. It would make Arthur feel a whole lot better, and make Merlin feel like hell. He wasn't looking forward to it.

"Alright, alright. Don't get your knickers in a knot. This isn't the first time I've done this, you know." Gwaine threw a mock salute Merlin's way as he headed off into the shadows. "If you get a panicked call, come rescue me, okay? I'll be counting on you."

"We'll try not to let you die horribly," Will grinned.

"Shove it, Will," Merlin growled. "We'll see you tomorrow, Gwaine. Be careful out there."

"You, too." Gwaine's voice echoed out of the dark, and then he was gone.

Merlin drew in a deep breath. He pulled his glasses off and undid the respirator's buckles. Dank and mildewy as it was, it was nice to breath unfiltered air for a second and see without benefit of technology.

"You going to be okay after this?" Will knelt next to him, and for once there was real concern in his eyes.

"Yeah. I'll be fine. It just… it kind of sucks. A lot." Merlin gave him a wavering grin.

Magic. Using it was as natural as breathing but it was painful at the same time, burning under his skin and along his nerves whenever he used it. The stronger the spell was, the worse the pain got. Healing spells were the worst and the best at the same time. Making someone feel better or saving a life was a high by itself, while the pain it caused made him want to die a little bit.

It was like a drug he couldn't give up, making life worth living for a time while it killed him at the same time. He often wondered if this urge to keep using it was a defect in his character, if he was an addict by nature, and if his friends' constant surveillance of him was the only thing standing between him and another overdose of Red Dragon.

He shook his head and finished wrapping Arthur's arm. Best to keep such thoughts for other, quieter times when he could afford to waste time on woolgathering. Then he closed his eyes and dug deep within, summoning the power that would heal Arthur and hurt himself. Self-sacrifice was a trait that saints and martyrs were praised for, but Merlin wondered how much fire they'd endured for the greater good.

If they felt the way he felt right now, he doubted they'd be so faithful.

Merlin might have blacked out for a moment. The next thing he knew, he had an ear to Arthur's chest, listening to the steady _thumpthumpthump_ of a healthy heart, and Will's hand was on his shoulder.

"You alright?" Will helped Merlin into a state of semi-upright.

"Yeah," Merlin said, though his voice shook and he felt like he was about to throw up. "Just need to wake him up. Then we can go." He pulled a stim patch out of a pocket, dropping it twice before Will took it away.

"I'll get it. Just breathe, okay?" Will brushed a hand over Merlin's hair. "Another couple of minutes, and we'll go home."

Merlin nodded and sat back, head in his hands, trusting Will to know what to do next. It was an easy thing to do, because except for that one time when he'd trusted the wrong street doctor, Will always seemed to make the right sorts of decisions, always seemed to know what he needed to do next, and Merlin sort of needed that right then. To let someone else make the choices that he just wasn't up to making.

If only his head wasn't aching so much, he might have been up for a bit of decision making. He might also have noticed that Arthur was back on somewhat unsteady feet and offering him a hand up. Merlin stared at the hand for a moment, watching it go from blurry to in focus before he realized what was going on.

"Wakey, wakey." The concern in Arthur's eyes belied the smirk on his lips as he pulled Merlin to his feet. "You going to make it?"

"Yeah." Merlin took a deep breath and offered him a confident, if shaky, smile. "Yeah, I think I'll be okay."


	9. Chapter 9

Against all odds Pendragon Corp bought the flimsy story of Arthur's death, hook, line, and sinker. At least, Arthur thought the odds of their accepting the story were slim to none, so Gwaine's return with tidings and payment from the world above came as a surprise to him.

And as something of a blow. He hadn't realized until that moment that deep down, he'd been harboring a tiny flicker of hope that Uther had actually cared about him, that the price on his head had been for his safe return, just like he had told the news people over the past couple of weeks. But a quarter of a million credits didn't lie, and neither did the trail of digital breadcrumbs that Freya traced back to one of Uther's slush accounts buried in the vaults of a tropical island nation with a name Arthur couldn't pronounce.

His father was a better liar than Arthur had ever given him credit for. "He looks so sincere."

"Who does?"

Arthur's gaze snapped up to meet Merlin's. "Sorry. Didn't mean to say that aloud. Or to wake you."

"It's fine," Merlin said, his eyes still heavy with sleep as he shifted around to sit up in his bunk. After yesterday's fiasco, he'd spent the night curled up around Freya and then had been ordered to spend the rest of the day in his own bed when Gaius decided that the kid's vital signs were subpar. "Can't spend all day asleep. Anyway. Who's sincere?"

"No one," Arthur said, biting his lip as he looked down at the paused news report on his tablet. It showed a video of his father dressed in a black suit and sunglasses like he was in mourning. His voice had been rough, his back bent, and every other indicator signaling that Uther was grieving his son's death. "It's just… my father. Uther. I didn't know he was such a good actor. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he's sincere in these videos when he says he's shocked by my 'death', and that he only wanted me to come home so I could get help for my 'addictions'."

"He's the CEO of a megacorp. Doesn't he need to be able to convince people of things?" Merlin asked. "Maybe even things he doesn't believe in himself?"

"I suppose." Arthur looked back at the tablet and the image of his father, so teary and grieving in the paused video. It looked so convincing, this sadness. If he didn't know any better, Arthur would have believed in the act himself. "Makes me wonder if any of the good things he ever did for me were real, or if it was all part of… something. Everything's upside-down these days."

"'Fair is foul, and foul is fair'," Merlin quoted, a tiny smile gracing his lips.

"That's Shakespeare," Arthur said. "That much I know. Is there anything you haven't read?"

"There are few things out there, but I'll get to them eventually." Merlin crossed the three paces to Arthur's couch and plopped onto the far end, folding up into one of his human pretzel shapes. "How are you doing? With…" he waved a hand in a vague circle to indicate the whole world around them, "everything?"

"Up is down, down is up. That sort of thing. It's, uh, it's not what I had in mind for my life, you know?" Arthur poked at the tablet to turn it off, blinking in the darkness. "I had a grander scheme in mind."

"Something bigger than this, you mean?" Merlin laughed.

"Yeah, a bit. Bigger office, company car, that sort of thing. Definitely better lighting."

"I can help with the last bit," Merlin said. A little blue magelight appeared in his hand, and he tossed it up into the air where it burst into a shower of sparks that froze in place, hanging above them like a net of stars.

"I didn't mean that," Arthur said. He couldn't help but smile at the lights, but the moment of joy fled at the sight of Merlin rubbing his hands together like he was an old man suffering from arthritis. "You don't have to do that, you know."

"I know. But I like to. Doesn't everybody like to do the things they're good at?" Merlin asked. His eyes were on the lights, his expression soft.

' _Most people aren't hurt by the things they're good at,'_ Arthur almost said, but he bit his tongue at the last second. "Gaius would have a fit if he saw you doing that. He told you stay in bed today and sleep."

"He told you the same thing," Merlin shot back.

Arthur conceded the point, then chuckled. "Look at us, sitting here on the couch. We're such rebels."

"Yeah," Merlin laughed, "watch out for us. We're really scary. Megacorps around the world will tremble at the thought of us, sitting here on our couch."

"I think you've already frightened a few of them. You're on a bunch of 'most wanted' lists. None of them know how you all manage to breach their security, or how you even know which closets have all their skeletons."

"It's all Freya," Merlin said. "She's the one who knows where to look. And _how_ to look. She told me once that it's like listening to thousands and thousands of birds and picking out the songs of two particular sparrows. It must be amazing to be able to do that. I can't even begin to imagine what it's like."

"It's a different perspective, I'm sure, to see anything in the world at a moment's notice. Not sure it's worth the price, though," Arthur said, then winced at how callous the words sounded as they fell out of his mouth. "Sorry."

"Nothing for you to be sorry about," Merlin said, though he stared down at his hands like Arthur wasn't even there. "What happened to her isn't your fault."

"I kind of feel like it is. It's my family's business."

"You were how old? Like sixteen or something? You weren't part of it. Your father's sins aren't yours," Merlin said with the sort of finality that a smart person didn't argue with.

So Arthur didn't argue, let the subject drop like a brick and brushed the news story off the tablet to go in search of something else to watch, something that had nothing to do with current events and everything to do with escapism- an old movie about beautiful ladies, pirates, fencing, revenge, and giants. An old favorite of Arthur's, from more innocent times.

He wasn't quite five minutes into it when he realized that Merlin had moved, was curled up beside him, his head resting on Arthur's shoulder. It might have been uncomfortable, except it wasn't, because Merlin fit there like they'd been doing this all their lives, sitting together on a couch and watching old movies for fun as children, and then to escape their worries as adults. So he didn't move away, didn't twitch, especially when Merlin's breathing slowed and he fell asleep and made Arthur's arm go numb. He ignored the tingling in his fingers, shifting only a little to restore circulation and eventually he, too, fell asleep.

* * *

The heroic man in black was facing down his arch-enemy when Will rattled the door open and woke Arthur by tossing his backpack onto the couch and into Arthur's lap, a motion borne more of old habit than wilful mischief if his wince was any sign. "Sorry 'bout that," Will said. Maybe it was just a case of shifting shadows, but he thought he caught a glint of jealousy in Will's eyes when he saw Merlin curled up next to Arthur on the couch.

"It's okay," Arthur muttered. He pushed the bag away and paused the movie in time to catch the baddie with the most ridiculous expression that had ever graced a baddie's face, then tucked the tablet under the couch where it wouldn't get stepped on. "Everything alright in the world above?"

Will pulled his glasses off and tossed them on his bunk. There was enough light to see the pensive look on his face as he plopped down on Merlin's bed. "I suppose, yeah. He been asleep for long?"

Arthur managed not to shrug. "About an hour, I think? And for a few hours before that. He's actually been doing what Gaius told him to do today."

"Yeah, he does that lately. Only for Gaius, though," Will said. He sat forward, elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. It's just, well," Will shrugged, "the coroner's report came out for that woman who died in the cafe."

"The one Merlin thinks he killed?"

"Were there any other women who died in that cafe yesterday?" Will scowled at him. "Yes, it was her. The official report says she died of malnutrition and extended Velocity use."

Arthur looked over at Merlin, still fast asleep next to him. "What do you think she died from?"

Will's back straightened, his gaze long and firm when he met Arthur's eyes, his voice quiet.. "She died of malnutrition and extended Velocity use, and no one's going to convince me otherwise. Because that's what I'm going to tell _him_ , and that's all he needs to hear."

"So you're going to lie to him?" Arthur's voice dropped to a whisper.

"No, you twat. That's the official report- malnutrition and Velocity. There was nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary found in the autopsy, so that's the official truth. There's no sense in manufacturing some speculation about what Merlin might have done or not," Will said. "He feels guilty enough about what happened to her as it is."

"Yeah," Arthur sighed. "That's probably for the best. Did you find out anything else about her?"

"Just her name. Nimueh. Don't know if it's her first or last name, where she's from, or anything like that. It's like she appeared out of the air and walked into that cafe to die." Will rubbed the back of his neck and then lay back on the bunk, hands clasped behind his head. "Whatever it was she was saying about you lot poisoning the well doesn't make any sense, either."

"She had magic. Maybe it was something to do with that?"

"Maybe," Will said. "Freya's been looking into it. She might find something I missed. She's a lot better at this kind of thing than I am." There was a bitter note in Will's voice, and Arthur couldn't help but wonder if he was thinking of the future, when Freya was dead and buried and he would have to take her place. It couldn't have been a comfortable position for him.

"Keep looking, then. I'm sure we'll figure something out if we can get enough information."

"Yeah." Will didn't sound convinced, but he wasn't arguing. Arthur wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that. Sarcasm and arguments were the always the first things out of Will's mouth, and to not hear them now was weird.

"Are you alright?"

Will's shrug was lost in the dim and the tumble on blankets on Merlin's bunk. "I'm fine, yeah. Just… I dunno. I thought maybe that getting this all done would make things a little better, you know? Since no one's looking for you, there's no more risk of us being found than usual. We've got a quarter of a million credits we didn't have yesterday, and that's enough to take care of everything for a long, long time." He sat up, elbows on his knees, hands folded in front of him. "But nothing's really changed, has it? We're still down here in the dark, Freya's still dying, and using magic still hurts Merlin. What was it all for?"

Arthur stared up at the ceiling like the answer would be spelled out in the copper wires, but it was blank as ever. "I don't know. I still don't know why you were all willing to risk yourselves for my sake." Will's derisive snort was the only thing Arthur needed to figure out the hacker's opinion on the matter. "But thank you. You could have left me to die at any point."

"Still could," Will said, his lips twisting in a humorless smile. "Probably won't, though. Merlin likes you."

"Apparently," Arthur said, glancing down at Merlin, who still slept with his head on Arthur's shoulder. "I get the feeling you're putting up with me for his sake."

"Could be." Will's gaze drifted away from Arthur and landed on Merlin. His sour expression softened. "He's the sort you'll put up with a lot for."

"Yeah," Arthur said. "I'm beginning to figure that out."

* * *

They kept their heads down for a week, choosing instead to expand their living quarters and spruce things up a bit while Freya squirreled away their new fortune into the various accounts she had set up across London, being sure to keep the deposits small enough that they wouldn't draw attention. What good would their efforts and newfound fortune be if financial regulators got suspicious and froze the accounts, after all?

Freya had tried to explain it all to Merlin, but all the financial-ese had made his eyes glaze over, so he'd gone back to clearing out the storage room with Will. The electrics were the hardest thing to deal with- an overload ages before had fried the wiring to a crisp. He'd spent the first four days clearing out the junked cables and cords and replacing them with new ones before they could even really see what they were doing without the battery operated lights that just weren't as bright.

It was uncomfortable, dirty work, and it gave him altogether too much time to think about what had happened in the light cafe, what had happened to that woman- Nimueh. Will had shown him the autopsy report and the official cause of death, which had made Merlin feel better for a grand total of ten minutes before he realized that "magic" would certainly not show up on an official report.

So he brooded and re-wired things, and brooded some more until the job was done and there was no more time or opportunity to brood. Will and Gwaine had gone on a careful mission above ground to do some shopping- furniture, new clothes and other supplies- and once they were done up there, there was too much to do to think anymore about Nimueh, and what she had said and done in the cafe.

And what _he_ had done in the cafe.

"Everything all right?"

Merlin blinked, startled, and looked up at Arthur. "Yeah, why?"

"Nothing, except you've been staring at the same spot on the ceiling for the past five minutes," Arthur said, plopping down on the bed next to him. "At first, I thought there might be something with the wiring, and you were trying to figure it out. Then I thought you might have fallen asleep with your eyes open, and that just seemed a little strange, so I figured I'd wake you up. I guess you weren't asleep, though."

"No, just thinking."

"I'd say, 'about what?', but you're still thinking about that woman at the cafe, aren't you?"

"Wouldn't you be, if you'd killed someone?" Merlin sat up and braced his elbows on his knees to hold himself up.

Arthur sighed. It was a disappointed sound, like Merlin had given him the wrong answer after he had spent days trying to teach a particularly easy lesson. "You didn't kill her. She died because of her Velocity addiction. You know what that stuff does to the brain."

"Yeah, I know. But maybe she could have gotten help for it. Found a way to get clean again," Merlin said. He sat up and scrubbed his hands over his face. "If I'd done something else, used a less powerful spell, then maybe she'd have that chance."

"I don't think she wanted that chance, Merlin. You said she was a magic user, just like you, right?" Arthur asked. Merlin nodded. "Then using her power must have hurt her the same way it hurts you, and she probably used Velocity to escape the pain. That stuff's not like the others, you know. It's not as addictive as- as other drugs."

"You mean they're not as addictive as Red Dragon," Merlin said without looking up. There was a spot on the floor that was suddenly interesting as hell. Hundred year old grease, maybe. Or a hundred year old blood stain.

"I was trying not to say it," Arthur said wryly. "But I have a feeling that we've both used it, and we both know what it's like, so I don't have to tell you that she could have gotten help if she'd wanted to, even late in that game. They have those clinics out there."

"Yeah, they have the clinics. And no, Velocity isn't as addictive as Red Dragon, but that's not the point. _My_ actions led to her death. I might as well have just shot her in the head," Merlin's voice rose with every word, and he was practically yelling by the time he was done.

"Merlin, listen to me." Arthur waited until Merlin looked up at him, locked eyes with him, and then waited some more while he calmed down. "Nimueh would have killed me if you hadn't intervened. You did what you did to save my life, and I thank you for that. But you can't beat yourself up over her death forever. You couldn't have predicted what happened."

Merlin opened his mouth to protest, but Arthur cut him off. "You have a lot of gifts, but as far as I've seen, prophecy isn't one of them. Unless there's something you're not telling me, and you actually _did_ foresee what happened, then there's nothing else you could have done. Between Nimueh and I, one of us wasn't going to make it out of there. Call me selfish, but I'm glad you did what you did."

There was nothing in Arthur's eyes but gratitude, plain and simple, and seeing it there, directed right at him, was almost enough to wipe away the guilt knotted up in Merlin's gut. Almost. He forced a smile. "I just wish things had turned out differently, you know. For her. Maybe we could have helped her. It's not every day you find another magic user. All these years, I thought it was just me and Freya. Then I find another one and five minutes later, she's dead. It's like Fate's laughing at me."

"I can't answer for Fate," Arthur said, "But I don't think she wanted our help. She probably would have tried to kill you, too."

"Maybe." Hard to believe that it was Arthur trying to cheer him up, and not the other way around. How things could change in such a short time. "How do you like the new room? It's got a new mattress, new lights, new air filters. It's practically the height of underground luxury."

Arthur eyed him for a long moment, then sat back and ran a hand over the covers- they were new, too. "It's not a top floor flat with floor to ceiling windows, but I suppose it'll do. Why are the lights brighter in here than the rest of the place?"

"I figured you were used to brighter light, having lived up in the clouds all your life. Down here, we're accustomed to the dark. I can dim it down, if you'd like," Merlin said. He secretly hoped Arthur would want to keep the lights brighter, despite the increased power usage. Maybe he could come in here now and then, close his eyes, and pretend he was above ground. In Hyde Park again, like that day he and Freya had watched the sunrise.

"I don't mind the dim," Arthur said. Merlin tried to keep the disappointment off his face, but Arthur must have noticed the faint slump of his shoulders. "But I suppose we could turn them back up once in awhile. They say bright light helps keep you in a good mood."

"So I've heard," Merlin said. He stared down at his hands as they picked at the comforter. The fabric was soft and fresh and difficult to fathom, like something out of a dream, except that it was as real at the one on his own bunk and the new clothes on his back. He tried to think back to a time when he'd worn new clothes before, but couldn't think of one. All the money they'd ever come by had gone to things like Freya's medical equipment and the bribes they paid to keep officials away from their little home. They only kept a little, enough to stay fed and clothed in second- or third-hand garb. And now they had new things. It was… strange. "Arthur, do you think-"

" _Merlin, do you have your tablet with you?"_ Freya's voice burst out of the speaker by the bed, so clear lifelike he could imagine she was sitting beside him again.

"Um, no. No, sorry I don't. I left it back in my room. Why?"

" _There's something happening on the news you and Arthur should see."_

Merlin didn't bother with questions. Freya wouldn't have answered them anyway. He bounded out of the room and down the hall and grabbed his tablet off the rickety shelf next to his bed. ""Which site?"

" _I've already sent the link."_

"What's going on?" Arthur asked from behind him.

"I dunno." Merlin turned the volume up and tilted the screen so Arthur could see it over his shoulder.

Uther Pendragon's image filled the little screen, head tilted down and away from the lights and cameras surrounding him. And recording devices weren't the only eyes on him- Uther was circled by a ring of police and security officials, and to top off the whole, strange ensemble, a pair of silvery handcuffs bound Uther's wrists together.

"What the hell?" Arthur's mouth dropped open.

"I dunno," Merlin said. He tapped the controls to increase the volume, trading the normal background thrum of underground machinery for the nasally voice of a female newscaster.

" _... a shocking development in the already strange story of Pendragon Corp that has been unfolding over the past several weeks. Less than a week after the announcement that Arthur Pendragon, the company's vice-president, had been found dead, the company's president, Uther Pendragon, has been taken into custody on charges of corruption and kidnapping for the disappearance twelve years ago of two Welsh children. The company's third-in-command, Morgana Pendragon, was unavailable for comment, but if the charges against her father stick, it appears as though Ms Pendragon will inherit the company in her own right. There are those who would cry foul as this strange turn of events, but according to unnamed sources who have been speaking with authorities, there is evidence both of Arthur Pendragon's previous drug use, and of Uther Pendragon's authorization of experiments that used children to attempt to create a form of artificial intelligence, which has been banned by international treaties for nearly twenty years…"_

Merlin minimized the video and opened up a newsfeed. "It's all over the matrix. And all the reliable sources are reporting it, too. It's true. Your father's been arrested, but not for anything he's done recently." He looked up at Arthur, tried to gauge his mood, but the shock was fading from his face to be replaced by a stony neutrality. "I can't say I'm sorry it's happening. I just didn't expect it to be because of Freya and I. We're the children they're talking about here. They've got pictures of us from when we were kids, and everything."

" _I didn't even see this coming,"_ Freya said. _"I've spent all this time looking for the files that you sent out, Arthur, and I never found them. I didn't even think the files about us still existed. I never even found a trace."_

"It must have been an inside job. Someone who works for Pendragon Corp, who has access to the core database, or who could piece together the fragments of old files," Arthur said. He took a few steps and collapsed on the couch, running his face over his hands.

"But who?" Merlin asked softly. "Morgana, maybe? She had everything to gain from your supposed death and Uther's arrest."

"No. It can't have been her. I don't believe it," Arthur glared up at him. "She's my _sister_. She's been closer to me than anyone for…for my whole life. I won't believe it. Just because this benefits her doesn't mean she orchestrated it."

"Then who?"

" _Perhaps it was the one who told Gaius about me and Merlin in the first place? Whoever that was, they clearly had deep access to the Pendragon Corp mainframe. Maybe they made a backup of those files and kept them on hand for a rainy day."_ Through the comm, Freya sounded sure of her words, but Merlin had a feeling that there would be a doubting edge if they were all in the same room. _"Maybe they've been looking for the more recently abducted children and the files that went along with it, and when they couldn't find them either, they decided to release the old information about us. The statute of limitations for kidnapping is longer than twelve years."_

"And it doesn't end when murder is involved," Merlin said. He'd been scanning the various reports, though he hadn't known what he was looking for until he found it. "According to this, you and I died in the bowels of the Pendragon Arcology as part of that AI experiment. If they can make this all stick, then Uther will be facing murder charges in addition to everything else, if only because he ordered the whole thing."

" _But will it even matter? The Pendragon family is wealthy beyond words,"_ Freya said, _"Even if these files are airtight, and the prosecutors can make the charges stick and get it all to court, they'll never be able to convict him. He has enough money to buy an army of the best lawyers."_

"It will matter," Arthur said, voice low, eyes fixed on the wall. "Because half the battle in keeping power is keeping up appearances. It won't really matter if they drop the charges tomorrow. Any enemies my father has can exploit this little chink in the armor and capitalize on it to no end. All they have to do is splash the reports of all the charges, show everyone the pictures of those two cute little kids that Uther ordered experiments on, and no one who's looking to keep a shiny reputation will do business with Pendragon Corp."

"But that'll leave things open for you, won't it?" Merlin asked.

"What, for my glorious return from the dead?" Arthur laughed bitterly. "After all these stories of my drug use? After I apparently falsified information and sent it to a dozen news outlets? Because that's how that story plays out now, since there's nothing to back up what I saw, no video, no documentation, no missing children miraculously recovered from Pendragon Corp. Do you honestly think _I_ could head up the company now, when all the world would thinks I was some drug-crazed lunatic?"

"What did you think was going to happen when you left the arcology, though? Did you really think you'd be able to go back?" Merlin turned the little screen off and sat down on his bunk across from Arthur.

"No. Yes?" Arthur sighed and buried his face in his hands. "I had hoped, I suppose, but I'd never given it any thought. Too overwhelmed by what I saw to give a thought to the future before I threw it away."

Merlin's breath caught. He started to speak, lost the words, then tried again. "Do you think that little of us, to think that your life is over now that you're here?"

Arthur sagged. "It's not that, Merlin. I… I wanted my father to take responsibility for his actions, and I guess I knew there was no way forward for me with the company once I walked out those doors. I just.." he shook his head and clasped his arms tightly against his chest like he was cold. "I suppose the reality of it all didn't sink in until I saw him in handcuffs and heard myself being described as a wastrel and a drug addict."

"It's a different world down here among the peasants, isn't it?" A crooked smile spread across Merlin's face, but was gone as soon as it appeared. "But it's not all bad, is it? Not completely. And you know we're fighting the good fight."

"Yeah, I know that," Arthur said without looking up. "It's just that there's a lot to take in right now. I think I'm going to go think about things. I guess."

"Okay. Do you need anything?" Propriety pushed Merlin to his feet when Arthur stood, like he was some kind of servant who needed to follow ancient rules of courtesy.

"No. Thanks."

"Should I call you when dinner's ready?"

"No, it's fine. I'm not hungry," Arthur said and left the room without looking up or back at Merlin.

"Right. Okay," Merlin told the air as he sat back down again.

" _He'll be alright,"_ Freya's voice broke the silence, her voice tinny through the old speaker. _"I don't think he's had much of a chance to really think about how much his life has changed, and that he can't go back."_

"Yeah. I'm sure you're right." Merlin glanced back at the darkened tablet at his side. "Never thought we'd end up being Uther's downfall, though."

" _I didn't, either. I thought all our records were a lost cause."_

"Where do you think they came from? You've been looking for them since you first got into the Arcology's mainframe. Why'd they suddenly reappear?"

" _I think,"_ Freya sounded almost hesitant, _"the question should be more along the lines of 'who', not 'why'. If we figure out who leaked them to the press, we'll be able to figure out the why."_

"And who's your pick?"

" _Occam's Razor,"_ Freya said. _"When you have a lot of hypotheses, the simplest one is the most likely one. And the most likely answer here is-"_

"Morgana," Merlin finished for her. "She's benefitted the most from this. With both Arthur and Uther out of the way, she goes from being second in line to being to only heir to the Pendragon Corp's fortune. People have done worse things for less than that much money and power."

" _Indeed. If we find out that she is responsible, do you think he'll believe it?"_

"It's hard to say," Merlin said. "He's a loyal man. It wouldn't surprise me if he refused to believe she did all this unless she told him so herself. But no matter who released those files, we have to keep our eyes open. Arthur's only just starting to realize how much his life has changed, and until that sinks in fully, we need to protect him."


	10. Chapter 10

"Arthur?"

The door opened a crack, just enough for Arthur to see Merlin peering through. His expression guarded, but he thought he detected a trace of uncertainty lurking in Merlin's eyes. "What is it?" He had meant to sound upbeat, but his tone was flat. Perhaps bordering on angry. Arthur sighed. "Don't mind me. It's just been that sort of day. Week. Month, maybe. I don't know. What do you need?"

Merlin pushed the door open further and leaned against the jamb. "Me? Nothing. I'm fine. I was just wondering about you. We've hardly seen you in the past couple of days, and that's hard to do, seeing as how we have five rooms and one hallway."

"I'm fine," Arthur said automatically, recognizing the lie the moment it left his lips.

"Really?" Merlin asked, studying his face like it was one of his books. "Because your life has been turned upside down, the world thinks you're dead, your father was arrested, and your sister has inherited the company that should have been yours. And you've hardly eaten, and unless you've been really quiet about it, I don't think you've showered, either."

"Merlin-"

"You definitely haven't shaved," Merlin interrupted. "You're looking a bit scruffy. You should do something about that. I mean, I know we live clear down here and that we don't exactly mingle with polite society-"

"Merlin!"

"But that's really not a reason to ignore your hygiene. Or to not eat the food I slaved over for almost ten minutes," Merlin plunged on, not giving Arthur the chance to get a word in edgewise. "Really! I had to cut open the meal packets for everyone and heat them up. It was work!"

"If that was hard work, then I'm a pretty lady," Arthur said, smiling in spite of himself, which was probably the effect that Merlin had been going for.

"I dunno. In a certain light…." Merlin's brow furrowed and he tilted his head, giving Arthur a speculative look. "Get you a nice frock and some heels, maybe a bit of lipstick. Some eyeliner. Your hair's a little short, but I'm sure there's something we could do with it. Plenty of women have short hair."

Arthur stared at the kid for a long moment before a chuckled escaped him and then turned into full blown laughter. He lay back on the bed, not sure if the hilarity came from Merlin's contemplating him as a woman, or if it was just the release of the tension that had been building within for the past few days.

"It wasn't that funny," Merlin said. He stepped into the room and slid the door shut behind him. "Are you sure you're alright? I could call for Gaius. He's just down the hall."

Arthur caught his breath and brushed the tears out of his eyes. "No, leave him be. It's just been a long couple of days, you know? Or a long few months. Years, maybe." He let his arms flop to his sides. "It's been a long life, honestly."

"I know how that feels," Merlin said. Arthur heard him take the few steps inside, felt the mattress shift when he sat down on the foot of the bed. 'Perch' might have been a better word. Merlin never 'sat'. He curled up on things, folded up in chairs, or perched on them. He didn't seem to be a man who found comfort easily. "Freya hasn't found any evidence one way or the other about Morgana's… involvement. Or lack thereof. Your father's lawyers have kept him out of jail so far, but he's under house arrest. Being monitored and everything."

"And the world still thinks I'm dead."

"Yeah. There's that, too," Merlin said. "But we're not so terrible, are we? The five of us down here?"

Arthur opened his eyes, jerked his head to the side, and looked up at Merlin. The kid's expression was guarded again, his eyes shuttered against whatever painful thing he thought Arthur might say. "You're wonderful," he said firmly. "All of you. I owe you my life. You could have left me to bleed out in that alley."

"If it weren't for us, you wouldn't have gotten shot in the first place."

"If you hadn't opened my eyes, all that corruption would have gone unnoticed for a long time. Maybe even until my father died and I took over, which could have been years and years from now." Arthur sat up and waited until Merlin stopped staring at the floor and returned his gaze. "I don't regret the actions I took. My only regret is that I didn't see what was happening until you all opened my eyes to it. I don't know why I didn't see or suspect that Uther was… unethical, but I didn't. Because of you, Uther is going to jail where he belongs."

"And what about-" Merlin's voice grew hoarse. He stopped, cleared his throat, and started again. "What about Morgana? What if we find out that she's behind all off this? Or at least part of it?"

What would they do? Manipulate events so that she proved her own guilt, then watch Pendragon Corp fall in her wake? And more to the point, what would Arthur do if Morgana truly was guilty? Could he bear to bring about her downfall? His own sister?

"I don't know," Arthur said at last. "I think, right now, we should take things one step at a time. Build a case slowly, track down every lead, find every last bit of evidence that's out there. _If_ she's guilty- and I'm not convinced that she is- then it's going to take an airtight case to convict her in a court of law. But," Arthur pressed his hands against the bed and pushed himself upright, then offered Merlin a hand up, "before we start on that, let's get to that food you were slaving over, shall we? Or is it too late for that?"

"It's not too late. Unless Will or Gwaine ate your share," Merlin said, grinning slowly.

"I should probably hurry then. I don't think they like me enough to wait for me," Arthur said. He slid the door open and switched the lights off as he stepped out, turning just in time to see Merlin emerging from the darkness.

"I think they like you more than you think they do," Merlin said. "They're just too… I don't know. Too afraid to show it, maybe? Too worried that they won't be manly enough? Or whatever. But they like you."

"I'll take your word for it," Arthur said. He stepped aside and gestured for Merlin to take the lead and show him the way. It seemed like the smartest thing to do, given that Arthur was only beginning to learn about this world, and Merlin was his teacher. There were worse things that could happen.

* * *

"So what do you think of him?"

"Of Arthur?" Merlin raised his eyebrows, playing dumb in the face of Freya's question so he could buy himself another few seconds of thought. She nodded, and he shrugged, dipping his fingers into the little tub of skin cream he'd been massaging into her hands. "He's adjusting. Slowly, but he's getting used to things down here. He's accepted the fact that his life has changed forever."

"I knew that," Freya said, smiling faintly. "I could see it in his search history."

"You poked around in his matrix searches?"

"I can't help it, Merlin, you know that," Freya said. "Your matrix usage shows up to me like a loud conversation at the next table. I don't mean to overhear, but it happens anyway. It's just like when you go out to the cafes. You can't help but listen in on other conversations, other lives. And then you learn all about other people without meaning to. Or wanting to, most of the time. You get speech, and I get search histories."

Merlin lowered his eyes, an embarrassed grin on his face. "I guess I knew that," he said, "it's just that it doesn't always sink in, you know? Like Arthur, figuring out that his past life is gone." His smile faded as he dipped his fingertips in the little tub again, drawing out some more of the cream to dab on Freya's face and hands. It was cool to the touch, like drops of cold water against her feverish skin. "What do I think of Arthur?" he repeated her question, eyes half-closed as he pondered the answer, the gentle motion of his fingers in his skin acting like a mantra to help him sink deeper into his own mind.

What _did_ he think of Arthur? He hadn't really bothered to sit down and think it over in the past few weeks, there had been so much to do and so many other things to brood about. "He's… I don't know. When we first started working with him, I thought he was an arrogant prat, you know? I mean, we were down here in the dark, and he was up there in his shining tower with the world groveling at his feet to get him to look their way. I didn't think he was going to go along with our plans. It was hard to imagine that he'd have any reason to aside from a basic bit of humanity, and that's not always present in the top levels of the megacorps."

"What changed?"

Merlin's hands went still, his fingers twining around Freya's. "All those days and nights where I sat here, monitoring his files and keystrokes, watching him go about his business and interact with the people who worked for him. I fully expected him to be a right ass, as stuck up and arrogant as any stereotypical exec. But he wasn't like that. I mean, he had his moments, but he was actually kind to the people around himself. He always said 'hello' to the janitors and secretaries, and would buy a round for his bodyguards when they went out for a pint. He didn't have to do any of those things, but he did.

"When the time came, and he sent those files out to the newscorps…" Merlin shook his head. "I suppose I didn't really believe in him until that moment. And then we almost lost him."

"And now?" Freya raised a shaking hand, brushed her fingers along his cheek.

"He's a good man. Better than just about everyone I've ever met. There are times I feel like I'd follow him to the ends of the earth and beyond. And then sometimes I want to smack him upside the head for being thick," Merlin said. Freya giggled. "But those urges balance out in the end. Once he finds his footing, I think he'll fit right in here. I could even see him leading us all someday."

"I think I could see that, too. He has that sort of air about him, like you want to follow, but you're not entirely sure why." She let out a long breath and shifted against her pillows, her eyes fluttering shut and opening again.

"Are you alright?"

She looked up at him and smiled, her eyes shining in the darkness. "I'm fine as I'll ever be."

 _As I'll ever be…_

Between the havoc the bioware was wreaking on her body and the effects of the pain killers Gaius was giving her, Freya's wakeful periods were growing shorter and shorter. Once she had been confined to her bed, she'd started sleeping more and more- ten hours at a time, then twelve, then fourteen. These days, she was asleep far more than she was awake. In time, she would do nothing but sleep, until her body shut down completely.

Merlin drew in a careful breath and clenched his jaw to keep his tears at bay. Her slow deterioration had been a reality for years. He thought he had made peace with the fact. But now that the end was drawing near, he was realizing that he hadn't prepared for it at all. He had no idea what he would do when she was gone.

"How do you feel?" he asked stupidly.

She made a noise deep in her throat. It sounded like it was supposed to be a laugh. "I'm still alive. And Gaius gives me the good stuff, you know. It makes all the pain go away, and I feel like I'm walking on the clouds."

"That sounds like a nice place for a walk. Does it look anything like that sunrise we watched in Hyde Park?"

"I doesn't look like anything," she breathed. "But it feels lovely. Cool and breezy. Like I could just float away."

"Don't…."

Freya opened her eyes and looked up at him. "I won't. Not for a while yet. You'll be alright, though, after. Gwaine, Gaius, and Will will help. And you have Arthur now, too."

"But I need you, too," Merlin whispered. "Stay with me, just a little while longer?"

"I'll always be with you." Freya's fingers went lax in his and her breathing evened out, a quiet sigh barely louder than the soft hum of the machinery around them. He adjusted the blankets around her shoulders and straightened out the tubes feeding her air and water and nutrients, blessing and cursing the things that kept her alive and yet reminded him of how quickly she was deteriorating.

He laid his head on his arms and watched her sleep for an hour or three, or maybe all night. Now wasn't the time for minding clocks or screens or anything except how frail and beautiful Freya was.

He didn't notice the door squeak as it opened or the sliver of golden light that splashed against the floor, but suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder. "Merlin?" Arthur kept his voice soft, like he was trying not to wake Freya. Merlin barely heard him.

"What?"

"Will says he's tracked down that lead he was talking about earlier. Do you want to come hear about it?"

Merlin sat up straight and rubbed his eyes. He wanted to stay, but there was work to be done. He couldn't hide from it forever. "Yeah, I'll be right there." He waved Arthur off and stood up, tugging at the hem of his shirt as he leaned over to brush a soft kiss against Freya's cheek. "Don't you worry. I'll be back before you know it," he said. Then he turned away and followed Arthur.


End file.
